Okay...every once in a while a completely unrelated memory pops into your head. Just can't help it. Once minute you are watching "Ellen" and the next thing you know you are thinking about crying your eyes out when you were five because the bumper cars weren't working and the only reason you went to the stupid carnival in the first place is because your mom promised you could go on the bumper cars and now your folks are trying to console you with cotton candy and corn dogs but it just isn't the same and suddenly your entire summer is ruined...ruined!!
Anyway...
So the memory I had the other day..albeit a stupid one...was in college...A bunch of us lived in a house we named "Lucifer's Playground." Anyway, my roomies Patrick, Matthew T. and I noticed that we had to clean the place because there were fucking beer bottles everywhere! Seriously..think about places you would never think about finding beer bottles and you would find at least one retired six pack.
How many beer bottles do you ask? It went like this.
Scene:
Three extremely hung over and now extremely stoned out college kids in the dirtiest living room you can imagine. (Seriously...like..if you were thinking clean...it was like...the opposite of that.) Beastie Boys "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn" is playing at a deafening volume.
Patrick: Hey Dude.
Eric: Dude?
Matthew: Dude.
E: we need to clean man
P: yeah..we need to get on that
M: yeah...there are like...beer bottles everywhere dude
P: Yeah
E: Yeah
(side note...pot makes you stupid. you cant make brilliant dialogue like this up)
M: There sure are a lot of empties around
P: Yeah
E: (cough cough) Yeah
M: How many?
E: What?
M: How many do you think we have?
P: How many what?
E: Dude, I can barely feel my hands right now..it is so sweet
M: No dude, how many beer bottles do you think we have?
E: I would say we have more beer bottles than you can shake a stick at.
P: What did you say?
E: I said, Doogie Howser is a pussy. I could take Doogie Howser.
P: No, no , no...the beer bottle thing.
E: Oh, I said we have more empty beer bottles than you can shake a stick at.
P: I'll accept that challenge.
At this point, Patrick picked up this large 5 foot staff he was using in some theater combat class and, with both hands grasped firmly on it...started shaking it violently at every beer bottle he could find. Matthew and I cheered him on..Although..since it was indeed a challenge...we had to point out the bottles that he was missing...
E: Dude..you missed that one
(Patrick races into the kitchen)
M: Dude...in the oven..you missed those
E: Didn't I see some in the fish tank?
Patrick meanwhile is completely out of breath..racing from room to room..shaking this monster staff and trying to shake it at every bottle and can imaginable.
This went on for about 15 mins...until we all collapsed in a heap, laughing until we could barely breathe. The kind of laughter that only comes from stupid, naive kids. Patrick did indeed concede that there were more bottles than he, as a mere human, could possibly shake a stick at. While he gave it, literally, the old college try, he was beat. This would come up repeatedly throughout the year at Lucifer's and in our stupid way, we decided that this was, indeed a means to measure something.
The stick never did win out. And whenever we were given the challenge that something was more than you could shake a stick at, we always stepped up to the challenge, and visitors to "The Playground" cracked up at the free entertainment. And more often than not, the visitors would take their own shots...thinking maybe, just maybe, they would be the one to beat the system. But try as they may, they never quite did it. Because in the end, it was always more than they could shake a stick at.
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