Happy Orange Juice

I cannot remember the exact reason for the event, but while perusing another blog I was reminded of this event. The title of the memory jarring post was Getting Caught or Not.


My friend K was spending the night at my house and we were juniors in high school. We were suffering from some sort of high deal angst and decided to procure some vodka. The stupidity of our methods stuns me to this day. So many things could have gone wrong but the karma must have been right.

After my parents went out for the evening, we drove to the local liquor store. We handed the first person we saw some money and asked them to buy us a fifth of vodka. (As you can tell, idiocy was running rampant that night along with our doldrums) Thankfully, the person who delivered our potion was neither a cop nor someone who would harm us directly. Forget that he was contributing to the delinquency of minors.

We returned home to an evening of screwdrivers. Why screwdrivers? Mainly because it was the beverage of choice at my folks dinner parties, they always called it “happy orange juice” and because I usually helped out with the bartending duties during these events. In other words, I knew how to mix a mean happy orange juice.

Before we knew it, the fifth was gone and we were feeling no pain. Well truth be told, we were feeling nauseous and the house was spinning but we were no longer experiencing the angst that led us there in the first place. K and I thought we were being quite covert as we cleaned up the kitchen of any evidence of the screwdrivers. We knew we were smarter than my parents. We both fell asleep/passed out right before my parents returned.

Death would have been better than the feelings we both had in the morning. At that point, angst sounded so much better than the mammoth hangovers we were sporting. When my mom called us down for breakfast, I was sure we were busted. Although I figured that since they did not come busting into my room upon their return, perhaps our drink fest was not discovered.

We had our game faces on as we entered the kitchen for breakfast. The table was set. All was copasetic. That is until mom placed 2 glasses of OJ in front of us. At that same moment, my dad set the empty vodka bottle on the table.

I have not ingested a screwdriver since…….