Young Folks

I'm 18 years young. I decide over a long weekend to head up to Cornell to visit my buddy Eric. Marty, who is at Lehigh at the time decides to come the same weekend. So far, so good. Buddies meeting up and having a good time. Eric has a set list of events for us to partake in. Not surprisingly they all involve drinking. Even though all three of us have only been at college a few weeks, we believe the others are well versed in understanding their own chemistry when alcohol is introduced into it. False, mostly.

We go to a party where there is a keg, a giant thermos of jungle juice and jello shots. I partake in all. Eric chugs beers. Marty has 3 beers, a glass of jungle juice, and a jello shot. I talk to other people, drink, watch the room spin, generally have a good time. I find Marty sitting on the floor whining. He has a half finished beer in his hand and he's slurring his words worse than a kid with three tongues. I give him a jello shot. Get some food in him. I tell him to stop sitting on the floor and get up and mingle with people. I come back after seeing a guy kick Eric's ass in a chugging contest and Marty is sitting on a papasan.

http://www.comparestoreprices.co.uk/images/fu/furniture123-papasan-chair.jpg

So I don't have to explain. I yell at him to stop sleeping. He lifts his out, and falls out of the chair, and the shell part of the chair falls over him. He starts complaining that he is trapped and can't get up. I pull the 2 pound wicker piece of chair and tell him to get up. I tell Eric we should go, Marty has had quite enough. We get back to the dorm. I go to the bathroom and throw up. I wake up the next morning, perfectly fine. I go into Eric's room and Marty is complaining about feeling sick. We tell him to drink water, he refuses saying he is nauseated.

Sidenote: Marty was a pre-med student and has told us many times that a hangover is like dying of thirst. That the body goes through similar symptoms in both.

Eric and I go grab breakfast and a plain bagel and juice for Marty. He refuses both telling us he's nauseated. We tell him he needs to drink. I go walk around campus with Eric and then go back to the dorm while Eric goes to class. Marty has told me that he has just called the hospital and admitted himself, and soon an ambulance comes to pick him up. I wait for Eric to finish up with classes, and then we go to the hospital where Marty was admitted for dehydration. We find him sleeping mostly naked with just a gown on attached to an IV, and then yell at him for going to the hospital like a moron. Oh, by the way, Marty is in his 3rd year of medical school now, and will hopefully listen to us the next time he is hungover, even though he understood what was happening to his body more than us. Dummy.

Voices of Old People

I'm 17/18 years old and I'm sitting on a bus parked at a cantina in the middle of the desert in Israel. It's getting hot as hell on the bus, not surprisingly. The doors were left open and the bus driver is no where in sight. Well, neither is anyone else, all my friends and classmates are off biking through the desert. I have decided against it because I wasn't feeling too well. I know, call me a wimp all you want, but I didn't want to get sick in the middle of the desert, and then be forced to bike my way out of there. I go sit in the shade on the backside of the cantina. Everything is going well until out of nowhere, I just start vomiting. Intensely. It is coming out of my nose and burning my sinuses. It is making me itch on the inside of my face, and yet the puke keeps coming. It's as insistent as a Jehovah's witness.

I call my parents. Let me reiterate. I am in Israel, they are 5000 miles away sleeping in their beds at 3 in the morning. "I'm sick?"

"What happened?"

"I started throwing up."

"Who's helping you?"

"There is no one here."

My mom really tried her best to not call me out for being a dumbass. "Sweetie, we can't really do anything for you, and it's 3 in the morning. We are going back to sleep, tell us what happens when you get settled."

She should have just called me a dumbass, because that's what I was/am. I mean, what did I expect my parents to do? Fold their arms and nod their head like Jeannie? Surprisingly that didn't happen. Stupid non-magical non-djinn parents. So eventually everyone gets back to see me sitting next to a pool of vomit that has been added to a couple of times. I was physically exhausted, so I couldn't have mustered the strength to move anyways. The ambulance came and took me to the nearest hospital. It was quickly decided that I was dehydrated. I felt stupid. I didn't have appendicitis. This could have been avoided by simply drinking liquids. Idiot.

I am put in a room with an older man named Moshe. He was over 65, had cataracts and emphysema. He was also ridiculous. After dinner time he went to the bathroom and started smoking. I didn't care, but the doctors and nurses came running in.

Drs: "Moshe, stop smoking in the bathroom and come out right now!"

M: "It's not me. The guy in the bed next to me is smoking."

Drs: "No he isn't. We can see him, and we can see the smoke coming out from under the door."

M: "I'm not smoking, hold on" (flushing noise, and then he comes out of the bathroom) "See, I'm not smoking."

Drs: (after entering bathroom) "You missed the toilet and the still burning cigarette is on the floor Moshe. Please don't smoke in the room, go outside if you want to smoke."

After that I read for a bit and then went to sleep. They wake you up like every 4 hours to do vitals, blood pressure and temperature. That was annoying as hell. Well, it was 6 in the morning and the vitals crew are back. They do me first and then go to Moshe.

Drs: "Moshe, time to wake up, we need to take your temperature and blood pressure."

M: "It is not morning! You are liars!"

Drs: (after going to the window and opening the shade clearly showing the sun has risen) "Look Moshe, the sun is out, it is morning."

M: "You are liars! Someone is outside painting scenery of a sunrise. It is the middle of night! Liars!"

I had a good time listening to him and his conspiracies. He was pretty funny. Anywho, I get back to Jerusalem and every one makes fun of me for going to the hospital for being thirsty. I take it in stride. They tell me to be careful, and at dinner that night, similar desert stomach pains come back and I fear it wasn't dehydration, but something worse. They take me back to the hospital, and tell me I ate too much fatty food too early after coming off of dehydration. So my second trip to the hospital was because I was fat. Thirsty and Fat.

Whodunnit?

I'm Sam Triolo, the balls pop out of my mouth. I'm Sam Triolo, the balls pop out of my mouth.

Trailer Trash

My friend Anath is one of the funniest people I know. She's one of those people where you can just start saying the worst things about people of any race or creed, and it can just escalate to the point where what you are saying is so terrible, if any one heard you, they would jail you for hate crimes. A little precursor though, so you can understand the story a bit better. Anath is tall. Taller than me, over 5'10". She's well proportioned though, somewhat hippy. Alright, she's got a model's body, tall and beautiful. A duck is a duck or some saying that makes sense to that effect. While being funny, Anath doesn't always think things through. She's impulsive more than stupid, but her impulsive actions always lead to hilarity, except the time she threw a cactus at my junk, that was just mean and unfunny.

Well, Anath came home and found that she was locked out of her house. Instead of waiting for a parent to come home to help her, (yes, she still lives at home at the ripe age of 24) she takes things into her own hands. Her next step is to take a rock and smash the window of the first floor bathroom, the smallest window on the first floor. Okay, I understand she is doing the least amount of damage by picking the smallest window, but since when did smashing glass become the first and best viable option? With her first self vandalization complete, she proceeds to try to climb through the window into the tiny bathroom. I say try because her ass causes her to get stuck. It's a small window. She shakes, shimmies, and pulls herself out of the window, finally getting her behind through the opening. Success is short lived, as the sudden pop of her ass through the hole affects her momentum and balance. Everything moves quickly and downward, as she falls on top of the toilet, hurting her body and pride. Is it any wonder she lives at home with no job?

Another quick one because the last one was short. Will and I went to the beach last weekend. It was awesome, the sky was clear, the sun was out. We got some books, laid out on the beach towel and just relaxed. We should have put two and two together and realized that us being the whitest people alive and sitting out in the sun was a bad idea. My legs and feet got badly burned, along with burns on my arms, face, and neck. Will got the brunt because he went shirtless. His chest and stomach are completely burned, redder than kabuki makeup. However, his face only got half burned, so he looks like Eclipso. Look it up if you don't know it. The worst part of the beach trip before we learned we were burned was while we were sleeping, or trying to. These three young girls somewhere between the ages of 6 and 10 were screaming right near us. They were on some type of scavenger hunt or buried treasure hunt because when I woke up I saw them digging frantically. They were screaming so loud, and some of it just didn't make sense. It was obvious they were looking for something(s) and kept finding pieces of it. "I found one!" "Come over here, quick, look!" "I found...a bear something" The last one I really wish I knew what she was talking about, because I saw where they were looking, and all I saw was broken shells. Maybe they found a piece of bear, which is normal on the coast of Oregon. Because they woke me up, I really wanted to drop kick all three of these girls into a bear's den. Then they'd find a bear something. Insert your own funny ending to that part of the story, I'm too lazy to go back and erase/elaborate to funniness.

Yes, this story is ripe for ridicule and comment. Why were Will and I sleeping together? Were we spooning? Are Will and I gay now? Are we gay pedophiles? Are we gay pedophiles who have sex with bears? Bring it on. Oh, and the answer to all the questions is yes. Even the why one.

At The Bottom Of Everything

College. A lot like girls. Some are easy to get into, and some are very difficult. Some you have to get to early, or you’re on their waiting list, or even worse, just a friend of the school. Some want you for your brains, others for your athletic prowess. Some you get with and you realize it’s a mistake and now you’re stuck with them until you find a better school, a cleaner, more fun school. A school that doesn’t smell terrible or have disgusting habits, or one that doesn’t have a grating voice that makes you want to tear your hair out. We all make our choices. Some times, the school has to choose us, get a line up of guys and make a choice based off our credentials.

Well, before we went to Israel, everyone who had applied early decision to school had found out, and was settled. A few weren’t and one was my buddy Eric. He was waiting to hear from Cornell, and when he didn’t hear in December from the school, and got put on the waiting list, he was unsettled. He just wanted to know he was in college. I was, most of my friends were, and he just didn’t want to have to worry about it. So I remember when he heard. We were hanging out on the kibbutz, and for some reason I remember a campfire but I could be mixing up stories, someone might have to tell me where it happened.

He got a phone call from his parents, and I saw him walk away, and come back and he told everyone, and he was so happy. So I told him that we needed to celebrate. We had already planned to go into Jerusalem that weekend and stay at Marty’s ex-girlfriend’s aunt’s house. I can remember Marty’s weird connection to this lady, but not where we were when Eric found out he got into college. So we get to the house. It’s small. A huge lofted bed over the couch, which was pull out. And a small kitchen and laundry, that was it. We got into Jerusalem and go to Mike’s place. There’s a bunch of us I want to say. Marty, Eric, Ari Strait (non-banana breath), maybe Leo, maybe some others, and I all go to Mike’s place. The Israeli American bar. Our favorite place.

Well, it was Eric’s night, so we kept buying him drinks, mixing it all up. We were 17/18, we hadn’t learned about liquor before beer. Someone bought him a rum and coke, another one bought him a glass of ouzo, and he kept buying his own drinks as well. Well, he starts reeling a bit and I order him a beer, and he claims it to be his last one. He takes one sip and slams it on the table. The beer overflows and starts covering the table. I note this, but don’t fully understand it’s ramifications. I realize later first when my pants feel wet, and I work it out backwards that that beer is the cause. I was just surprised it wasn’t Marty that spilled it on my pants.

So Eric is tipsy and pretty happy. High point of the night. We get our tab, and it takes forever to figure it out as we are all tipsy. We are 40 shekels short, and we realize it was because Eric put no money in whatsoever. I don’t even think he knew the tab came. So we start walking back to Marty’s ex-girlfriend (who dumped him because he wasn’t a warlock) aunt’s house. On the way back, Eric decides to leave behind some souvenirs, in the vein of urine. Once on the train tracks, and second time in the potted plant outside the house, which I think was used to hide a key. Too bad.

We get Eric inside, and he immediately starts getting sick. Not too crazy but enough that we didn’t know what to do. His high point is lowering. Marty and I take care of him getting him to take in some water. I am unsure of what happened, but I do remember finally that night, seeing Eric, asleep or lying on the floor of the kitchen, looking pained, wearing only his boxers, with a pink towel next to his body. I’m so proud of you, my Cornell graduate. Happy Birthday.