Friday Drinking Stories

Bill, Paul, BlackFive and others have been talking about drinking stories. Thanks for the inspiration guys, here’s my take on it.

Got a favorite drinking game? Quarters comes immediately to mind for a lot of people, and there was a board game whose name I’ve forgotten. It was in a bright pink Monopoly-sized box, and it seems that everyone bought it at Spencers in the mall.

Then there were the group participation games, keyed to a television show or movie. A local favorite was Chug Boat, where each player took a Love Boat character and each time your character appeared on screen you took a drink of your beer. When three or more characters appeared together, those players had to chug the remainder of their beers, and when the whole crew showed up together, everyone chugged a full beer. A variation was "Oh, Bob" using the Bob Newhart Show.

For those living at 78rpm in a 33 1/3 world, try the same game watching the movie Clue.

Nothing like a game of Guts Checkers to get roasted in a hurry. Each checker is a shot glass, dark liquor on one side, light on the other. Twelve shots if you clear the board. Being a wuss (highly recommended) meant you used mixed drinks instead of straight shots. This had the advantage of letting you play more than one game before the world went away. Screwdrivers vs. Vodka Sevens works well, but any contrasting drinks will do.

Feeling cerebral? Try Shot Glass Chess. Many suggested variations too.

Up in the Great White North, where winter runs from September to June, drinking is practiced often and continuously. The drinking game of choice is Chug Hockey, played with a deck of cards. Chug Hockey is the penultimate drinking game because it’s simple and quick playing. Hands last all of about, oh, thirty seconds, and the loser of a hand immediately downs a shot. Two people will get thoroughly trashed in twenty minutes on as little as two six-packs, and have fun doing it.

Here’s the rules. Deal three cards to each player, stack the rest of the deck in the middle of the table. Turn over the first card from the stack. Players take turns laying down their cards and add the numbers to the total. So, for instance, a five is showing and you lay down a seven, you call ‘twelve’. The next player lays down a queen, calling ‘twenty two’, and so on. You take another card from the stack so that you always have three cards in your hand (and if you forget, oh well). The idea is to stay under 99. Simple, eh? Suits don’t matter, and aces are ‘1’. There are a few special cards. A ‘4’ reverses the order of who plays. A ‘9’ is a free card and doesn’t add to the total. A ‘10’ subtracts ten from the total. And finally, the King means the total is automatically 99. That’s it!

If more than two people are playing you can go quite a while without having to drink, which occasionally leads you to intentionally losing just so you can wet your whistle. It also leads into a drinking story.

My wife and I once had the best babysitter in the world. One night we had a party at our place, and our babysitter was invited to, well, babysit while the adults partied. She brought along her new boyfriend, a young military kid full of attitude and the ability to make people immediately dislike him.

We decided to play some Chug Hockey. There were eight of us sitting around the table to play, including boyfriend. We explained the rules and he understood them soon enough. It’s wasn’t long before the babysitter came in and saw what was going on. She just rolled her eyes and walked back out, because we’d already told her that her boyfriend was a dick, and she knew what was coming.

It didn’t take long before he was buzzed enough to be distracted (here, have another shot). A short time later we were stacking the deck right in front of him before we dealt (wow, another shot for loser boy). When he was almost comatose, we decided to add insult to injury and played three hands in a row where the loser had to eat a raw egg. Wanna guess who got ‘em all? When he passed out, we dragged him outside and let him sleep it off on the grass. We had a great babysitter, but she had lousy taste in boyfriends.

Posted by Ted at October 3, 2003 08:38 AM | TrackBack