Ah, the joy of carting the drunk and stupid from one destination to another.  I am so grateful Jerry and his former friend and “drunk and stupid enhancer” Terry had their falling out a couple of years ago. These two guys had the potential to be plenty drunk and stupid by themselves, but get them together and the drunk and stupid and just plain annoying factor increased by a factor of 100.  One night when Terry was staying with us he got incredibly shit-faced, wandered into Steve-o’s room, pulled up the edge of his mattress and proceeded to whiz all over the Christmas presents I had at the end of the bed as well as all over Steve-o and his sheets. I was so pissed I threw Terry out and was rid of him for all of about a month, when Jerry begged me to let him come back over again.  Somehow it just doesn’t seem right to let a “guest” return to your home after pissing all over your kid and your family’s Christmas presents, but what the hey?  When I had to ferry them both back and forth to the campground for Saturday night poker it was occasionally a real nightmare.  One evening they got into a punching match in the car.  Another time, Jerry thought it funny to yank the car out of gear and grab at the steering wheel when he was having a drunk and stupid argument with Terry and Steve-o.   That is not funny at all on the freeway when you’re doing 70 miles an hour.  I do not look forward to shuttling the alcohol impaired, regardless of who is involved. 

Then there is always the potential of the drunk and stupid individual puking in the car.  I remember narrowly avoiding having my 72 Super Beetle spewed in.  Dawne’s sister had been going on with the rot gut whiskey and God only knows what other downers and assorted drugs.  She was notorious for getting drunk and stoned pretty much constantly back then.  I was nice enough to get her a ride home before she ended up getting in a fight, but as we pulled up near Dawne’s apartment, she started to hurl.  Instinctively I reached over her, opened the passenger’s side door from the inside and shoved her out.  Puke smell does not come out of car interiors.  I had to do the same thing to Jerry one night when he got Jagermeister confused with Formula 44.  He narrowly missed spewing all over the inside of my 94 truck.  Of course the Jagermeister Incident should have been more than enough to convince a sane person that drinking to excess is a bad idea, but Jerry isn’t a sane person.

After I had shoved Jerry out of the truck he spewed all over the parking lot and most of the way through the courtyard behind the apartment we lived in at the time.  Somehow I got him up the porch steps and in the door, then he flopped over on the dining room floor, while ranting unintelligibly.  The bathroom of this apartment was upstairs.  The apartment building was built in the late 19th century by German immigrants.  Germans must not have been very tall then, because anyone over 5’9″ would bash their head on the ceiling of the staircase if they failed to duck.  The staircase was also narrow and steep, so much so that the only way to fit a full size bed upstairs would have been to either cut the box spring so it would bend, or to procure two twin-size box springs  and two twin size mattresses and install them on a king size frame.  We put our full size bed in what should have been the living room to avoid this conundrum. 

Anyway, I wanted Jerry upstairs in the spare room (which had a small roll-away bed in it) so he would be close to the bathroom, and so I would be able to try to sleep a little further away from the incoherent moaning, screaming and various noises I knew he would be emitting.  So,  I endeavored to remove his very drunk carcass from the dining room floor and proceeded to more or less drag him up the stairs.  How I got 180# of dead weight up that hideously steep flight of stairs I still wonder, but I do know he ended up with not a little rug burn from the carpet on the stairs.

When Jerry gets to a certain very drunk and very stupid plateau, he doesn’t just pass out like a normal drunk.  That would be too easy.  I got him into the spare room and on to the roll-away bed, only to hear, “Where’sssss my billow, bittcchhhhh?”

I retrieved a pillow from the bed downstairs, opened the door and threw it at his drunk ass and slammed the door.  He had a three day hangover from that little bender. 

I learned my lesson regarding drunk and stupid drinking at age 23.  Waking up in a bathtub full of cold water in a motel room with a half-eaten Domino’s pizza on the ledge has a way of putting one off the liquor.

The New Year’s holiday brings two of my least favorite celebratory activities: drinking (which even if I wanted to, my health really doesn’t permit it) and football, which of course, can be a good babysitter, but it gets old when it seems as if Jerry is going to get bedsores from lounging about in the bed doing nothing but watching football games.  I will find something else to watch or I may take a road trip up to Mom and Dad’s to bring him some beans (gotta love pinto beans and ham) and some pork and kraut.  Perhaps that is not a kind thing to do to senior citizens- bringing them farty food- but I don’t have to stick around long enough to smell it.

I do like the pork and kraut tradition.  I was lucky to find a lovely pork roast (not always easy because there are a lot of people of German ancestry in Central Ohio who do the pork and kraut thing for New Year’s)  so that roast will be wafting its tantalizing aroma throughout my kitchen tomorrow.  The bad thing about pork and kraut is that as far as fart-worthiness, it’s every bit as explosive as pinto beans or White Castles or boiled eggs and beer.

Mmmmm, pork and kraut.  With mashed potatoes and Bean-o.

Next week we return to normal.