4/17: When Good Parties Turn Bad (Part I)
When I started taking a trip down memory lane for the 1992 National League Championship Series (see my 4/15 and 4/16 entries), I remembered what it was like for the Pirates to field a winning team. Better yet, I was part of this by going to Games 3 and 4 of the NLCS. Although the Pirates lost in a heart-breaking Game 7 in Atlanta that year, my interest in baseball didn’t head to the showers afterward. I was also a Blue Jays fan back then. I’m not sure why I took a liking to the Jays; I think it might have been that bird symbol. In fact, it probably was due to that. As I followed this team in the mid-80s, I began to feel for them considering they always choked, both in the regular and postseason. (I'm sure Bored could spend a week talking about the "Blow Jays" of the 1980s and early 1990's.) Well, ’92 was different as they finally made the World Series, but would they have the fire power and pitching to defeat the Braves?
Who knows and who cares – I was getting ready for a party.
If you read the Game 3 recap from my 4/15 entry, chances are you remember my friend who went with me to this game. Well, this friend, Jeff, was going to have a party at his house on October 24. For some reason, his parents were heading off to their daughter’s college to spend a weekend with her and figured Jeff was mature enough to be left unsupervised. On a side note, Jeff’s sister attended Dickinson College and his parents had a bumper sticker on one of their cars that read, “I’m a Dickinson Dad.” The best part? That was the car Jeff was allowed to drive. Anyway, this party was going to be the shizzle because we had another friend, Greg, with a driver’s license that said he was 22 years of age; problem was he was only 17. However, this was a legit license; the DMV screwed up the date on his card. So whenever someone had a get-together and needed alcohol, Greg was the man to call.
In my opinion, your junior year of high school is the best out of the four years you're there. Many of us are old enough to drive and work, which means disposable income and non-parental transportation. In addition, you don’t have to worry about college and all that other crap because you’re not a senior. The junior year is your “free time,” and this October party was going to be our big celebration into pseudo-adulthood.
Besides myself, Greg and Jeff, there were two other friends that were planning this party: Don and Bryce. For weeks my friends were budgeting money for food and a variety of alcoholic drinks. Also, they were planning other aspects of an event like this: Who would be invited? Should there be a cover charge to pay for the keg? How will we enforce potential crashers? You know, all the important stuff. It was finally decided that we would invite a certain number of people, and we would have a $2-3 cover charge, which would finance the booze. We were also going to have Greg, who was a big guy, man the front door and act as the bouncer, refusing to let anyone in who wasn’t on our list.
The plan seemed good in theory, and we were all looking forward to this upcoming weekend. However, a few days before the 24th, there were some signs that were pointing to this being a problematic couple of days. Well, actually, there was only one – and it wasn’t even a sign; it was a map. A map to Jeff’s house that was created by this girl we knew named Shannon who passed it out to just about every kid in school without us knowing about it until it too late to do anything. We grumbled about Shannon’s actions, but we figured it wasn’t a big deal because our “bouncer” plan would keep the riff-raff out.
When October 24 came, we were all psyched. Sometime in the afternoon, we decided to get the half-dozen or so large pizzas we had planned on purchasing for this get-together. While me, Don and Kurt (another friend of ours) went out to get the pizza, Greg, Bryce and Jeff would hold down the fort. Before we left, the rule was not to let anyone in until the three of us got back; strength in numbers and all that. As we left to get the food, we joked about Jeff being “attached” to the keg (he had swigged down quite a few brews already). We picked up the pizzas and returned back to Jeff’s house. When we left there were only 2-3 cars in his driveway. When we came back there were at least a half dozen. For the last few miles to Jeff’s house, Don was saying, “He (Jeff) better not let anybody in.” When we pulled up to Jeff’s house and saw the newly parked automobiles, Don said, as he recognized some of the cars that belonged to people who weren’t invited to this get-together, “Oh that fucking idiot let them in.” I knew this was going to be an … eventful night. That is, if you consider attempted rape, theft, a physical altercation between the sexes and property damange to be "eventful."
Oh, yeah. And the Blue Jays were one game away from winning their first World Series title.
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