Last night I went
out with some friends. We went to the pub for a while and we went to a
restaurant to have a beautiful dinner. Then we saw a brilliant movie. The night
was capped off by another stint at the pub.
I went with three other people but
I am alone in the fact that not only can I remember what I had for dinner, but
I was still carrying it inside my stomach at three am. I can also remember the
movie, who was in it and how it ended. But joy of joys, I can tell you the name
of the pubs that we went to.
Now, it is
important to add here that I was not out with three dementia sufferers. The
boring reason for my spectacular memory recall is that I don’t drink alcohol.
At all. It never passes my lips and not because I am weird or antisocial, but
because I am severely allergic to it and that expensive cocktail, no matter how
delicious, is not worth the inevitable hospital stay that follows it.
I found out (the
hard way) at an early age that alcoholic beverages and I were not destined for
a marriage made in heaven. Every time I had one, it had the same result. I
waited for the euphoria, the feeling of goodwill and ‘let’s party’. All I got
was a doctor bending over me shining a light into my eyes and asking me if I
knew what day it was. So no more alcohol for me.
This meant, horror
of horrors, that I would have to live out the rest of my life as a social
pariah, a complete misery at parties and never have a moment of fun. Ever. I
would be a social outcast and no one would ever speak to me in a pub and I
would get the nickname of Miss Poe-face because I thought that I was too good
for everyone else. Yeah right!
Luckily for me and
my mental formation, I have a great role model because my mother doesn’t drink.
She can but she has made the choice not to. At least this meant that I didn’t
feel to weird. I wasn’t the only one.
And do you know what? Not only do I have just as much fun as my
inebriated companions, I can remember everything that happens – and more
importantly, I can remember everything that they do to embarrass
themselves.
There are a few very nervous people now that I am writing this, I
can tell you. And I have a nice lot of very good stories to tell.
Obviously, I
can’t name names (as long as I am paid enough, anyway) but I may as well
because the ‘stars’ wouldn’t remember that it was them anyway. Although some
may vaguely recognize themselves.
I get my kicks,
having fun with my friends after the big night when they have sobered up
enough to worry about what they might have done. They can’t be sure
about anything except the fact that I am usually very reliable and not given to
flights of fancy. I mean, if there really was a raid on the place, I am
the only one that the police would speak to because….well. I’m upright and that
is a start.
Simply asking a
male friend for my bikini top back the next day can send him into a cold sweat
and I just love watching as he tries to quietly ask everyone else who was with
us, what might have happened. All he gets is a lot of heads shaking and
shoulders shrugging and then he has to avoid my husband for weeks (who
incidentally is in on the joke), just in case! Cheap thrills I know, but
remember, I have to have some fun.
I recall one
particular evening that Rob and I had at a friends house. We had
dinner and we talked and laughed until well into the
morning. During this time, several excellent bottles of wine were opened and
consumed. Around one o’clock or so, I noticed that Husband Rob was very quiet.
And he was about the same colour as the wall. In fact, he was making the wall
look colour saturated. When his eyes stopped crossing and uncrossing, I asked
him if he wanted to go and he nodded. With his mouth tightly closed. We said
hasty goodbyes and left.
During the five minute drive home, he said nothing. He
was so white by this time that he was glowing. I pulled into the garage home
and turned to say something and he had disappeared. He was on his knees in
front of the car, fertilizing the lawn! It turned out that my friend’s husband
had the same reaction soon after we went. Went quiet. Went white. Went to the
loo. Went to bed.
Rob collapsed into
bed and was not heard of until the next day. Then I thought, now it’s my turn to have some fun! At breakfast
I said to a bleary eyed Rob, “You know that you will have to pay for those
flowers…he, he, he.”
“What flowers?”
“Last night, you fell over into the flower
bed and wrecked the whole lot. That was quite a lot of work for (our friend).
She will be upset when she sees it.”
“I didn’t fall over” insisted Rob several
times, each time a little less convinced. I looked him straight in the eye with
a gaze usually reserved for mothers and their errant offspring and said,
“I think that I remember better than you,
hmm?”
After breakfast I
heard someone scrabbling around in the dirty linen basket. I saw Rob through
the crack in the door (as you do), secretly checking the knees on his jeans to
look for mud! If I hadn’t had a tea towel stuffed in my mouth he would have
heard me nearly wetting myself laughing at him. He even checked with my friend
the next day. She had been pre warned too so she was able to make him feel even worse! It is a
useful technique that most women possess, to be able to look straight into a
man’s eyes and lie through her teeth. As I said, I don’t get out much!
I guess that the
moral of this particular story is that everyone gets to gave fun. In their own
way. There is no such thing as needing alcohol to make a party. There are
certain eccentrics amongst the partygoers who get off on the fact that they
don’t drink and they don’t have to work either while their inebriated friends
are providing them with A1 blackmail fodder.
© Debbie von Grabler – Crozier 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment