Party Politics

When you have all the time in the world and nothing to fill it with, you start to pick up creative hobbies. Lots of people in Deadsville fill the void with drugs and alcohol, and we did too. But drinking was never enough for us. If we were just sitting around in our apartment having a few beers, we’d always have some other activity going too. For a while several of us took to making chainmail armor out of coathangers. We’d take a coathanger, one of the thick, heavy gauge ones, and straighten it out. Then using needlenose pliers, we’d roll up a ring of metal about 1 inch diameter and cut it. Then we’d loop the wire through that ring, roll it into another ring and cut that one. It is a lot like knitting except you get blisters and the pliers slip once in awhile and give you a good pinch. That’s why you need to be drinking the beer. It serves as an anticipatory painkiller.

We also used to just sit and practice quarter shots for hours on end. “Quarters” is a drinking game where people take turns bouncing a quarter off the table and into a shot glass. If you get it in, you get to make someone else in the game drink. If you miss once, you can either pass the quarter to the next player or take a risk and try a second bounce. If you miss your second try, you have to drink and your turn is over. If you make it, you keep going until you pass or miss twice. It is a great way for a bunch of people to get drunk in a hurry.

Now if you practice bouncing a quarter off the table and into a glass all day, every day, for months on end, you get pretty good. My friends Gene, Scudder, Matt and I got so that we could keep shooting for over a hundred times without a miss. So we decided to make it harder. We practiced bouncing the quarter with our left hands. Once we mastered that we had to bounce the quarter on its edge. And then by rolling it off our noses. Then we switched to taller and narrower glasses. Or bouncing it over one glass and into a second. It was pretty insane.

When we would go to parties, there would almost inevitably be a game of Quarters going. Just as inevitably, there would be at least one loudmouth jerk who would be picking on people. Besides being verbally abusive, every time he’d put the quarter in, he’d select the same person… making them drink repeatedly with the goal of making them sick.

Now remember, my friends and I were the smart, geeky kids. We weren’t cool. We weren’t witty and charming. We weren’t tough and looking for a fight. What we WERE was obvious targets for the jerks.

But little did they know that we were ready for them….

Beforehand, we had set some rules about how we would engage people in quarters. When a group of people have such awesome power it is important that you set ethical guidelines. Our rules were:

1) we don’t pick on each other – that would lead to mutual destruction

2) we would share the drinks around to multiple people instead of picking on just one person

3) we would miss on purpose after about 5 successes in a row

If everyone there played nice, it was a happy, fun game of sharing drinks and laughs. But if a bully decided to pick on one of us…..

First he’d make one of us – the intended victim - drink two or three in a row and make some remark about wimps. One of us would usually take this opportunity to warn him to back off – which he’d inevitably ignore.

When it got to be “the victim’s” turn, he would pop the quarter in 10 times and give all the drinks to the jerk. Then ask him if he really wanted to compete like this. Of course, he would. They always do. Next time around, he’d get 20 in a row. Then 30. If he became even more belligerent and started bad-mouthing the rest of us, we would team up and all pick on him.

Consider this:

We usually used double shot-glasses of beer. These hold 3 to 4 ounces of beer. A can of beer holds 12 ounces of beer or 4 shot-glasses worth of beer. Which means each time his “victim” made him drink, he was downing at least 5 beers (20 shots at 3 ounces per shot equals 60 ounces) within the time it takes to bounce a quarter off the table 20 times…. Around 1 minute. If he had 2 or 3 of us ganged up on him, it would turn into 10 – 15 beers in 3 minutes.

Needless to say, the bully was usually out of the game in short order and it would return to a friendly game. The other players usually appreciated that, and we gained a certain respect for our efforts. It didn’t make us cool or popular or get us laid, but hey….. if you are a geek in a small town where everyone knows everyone and remembers every foolish thing you ever did - you take what you can get.