Life and Times of a Poker Addict

So Friday night I head up to my northern Virginia to Rick's house. Naturally, the bastard passed out so I had to delve into my seldom used ancient native American roots to track the path to his house. I finally arrive at his place around 11:15pm, get him up and we head off to 7-11 to get some beer before it's too late. Once we get back to the house we realize that we don't have enough cups to play pong with, so back in the car to 7-11 we go. This time when we pull up the owner has some interesting looks for us but by midnight we are all set to get the game underway. We step out into his backyard and are heading up to pull the pong table into place when we pass by a gap in his fence. Suddenly, a head pops up in the blackness and asks if it can come over the fence for a minute. We look at each other quizzically but tell the guy that he can.

This goofy kid pops over the fence with some story about how he's visiting his grandma next door and she told him there were some college kids that live here now and usually party on the weekends. He was going to tell us to try and keep it down, but maybe did we mind if he just hung out for a bit? Uhhhhhhhh, sure. We gather the pong table and start setting it up and he asks us, "So you guys are playing pong?" Scene from Animal House flashes into my head, unfortunately, Dorfman didn't disappear this time when we gave him a funny look.

We start chucking the rock and we're about a minute into a game between Rick and I when this kid suddenly pipes in with, "Have you guys ever played a game called Cornhole?" Everything stops. Now, I don't know what happens in the backwoods of Kentucky or wherever the fuck you're from, kid, but where I come from if you suddenly appear out of the dark of night and then ask two strangers if they've ever played Cornhole before, it's grounds for getting beat down. Or at least for me thinking about it. And then staying with my back as close to the wall as possible.

Apparently while I was inside filling up water cups I missed the part where this clown was telling Rick about being sober for 67 days now, but I walk out to him cracking his first beer which should complete most all the information about this kid you need to know. He's 21, got three DUI's in two weeks, kicked out of his fraternity for being a general fuck-up (again, big blinking warning sign when a fraternity kicks you out for being a fuck-up) and apparently is very into some game called Cornhole. Well Cornhole goes from zero-to-drunk in about eight minutes. As soon as he finished his second beer he's stumbling all over the patio and now I'm wondering at what point we're going to have to fish him out of the pool when he falls in.

There's more incoherent ramblings for a while, something about him wanting to live in his grandma's house when she finally croaks (his words, not mine) and then he passes out in a chaise lounge for a bit. He comes to in time to play once more, at which point he tries to bend over and pick up the ball but instead falls down the steps behind him. That single event made putting up with him for an hour almost tolerable. Almost. Nothing like watching a drunk fall down some very shallow stairs in slow motion to make up for general stupidity.

We finally get Cornhole to go back over the fence and we drink for another couple hours before turning in. And I haven't gotten to Saturday where the white trash neighbor threatened to slash the tires of someone coming over to the party at the house. All that and more in tomorrow's post...