I woke up Sunday morning completely submerged under 9 pounds of assorted blankets and quilts, wondering why I was still freezing my ass off. Peeking out of a small opening in my layered cocoon, I blinked up at the harsh, florescent ceiling lights. Oddly, the ceiling seemed miles away. Suddenly, I heard a horrendous cawing loud enough to split my eardrums and induce an immediate headache. I looked around for the source of such a sound, half expecting to come face to face with a prehistoric pterodactyl. Through clouted memories I remembered that there was, indeed, a loaded shotgun just out of my reach and I briefly contemplated the satisfaction that would come from quieting that damn bird. The urge passed, however, with the thought of actually having to bring myself to some sort of vertical position. An icy breeze reiterated the decision to remain in my covered cave and at the same time lifted the cohesive fog from my swollen brain.


How did I spiral south so fast the night before?


As I began my cumbersome recollections,I knew one thing was for sure, I was going to have a hell of a hangover.


I started out pretty good on Saturday. Dave and I took a mini road trip down to Hermann to join our friends who were already camping. The itinerary also included a trip into town for Oktoberfest, followed by some gun shootin’, four wheelin’ good ole Chicken Fried time. Around 2 o’clock, we headed into town and found a table at one of the wineries.


And this is when I started my slow decent into wine-ebriation.


Contrary to popular belief, I am not a heavy drinker, really. I limit my happy time to one day of the week and it’s rare for me to go hog wild. But anchor me down in the middle of vineyard on a nice day, 120 miles away from any familiar run ins and I’ll promptly make a foolish mess of myself. For me, wine is the greatest thing since Brett Favre. I love wine like Letterman loves naive and wide-eyed women. Get the picture?


So my odds started stacking up against me right then and there.


I ordered a glass of red with a description of “full bodied and sweet made with Concord grapes”. They seemed to have forgotten to mention the dusting of uncut cocaine that must’ve been added. I downed two glasses in 10 minutes and damn near vaulted the bar to get my third. After my fourth, everything got all unicorns, baby tears and angel wings. I was having a gay ‘ole orgiastic time. We giggled as we saw a school bus of barely legal Chesterfield transplants arrive, all bleach blonde, sun-dried and dressed in cocktail attire and I’m really surprised I didn’t see the Friday chick among the group. Typically, this would have annoyed me to no end and if Dave even glanced at the pretty one with the sideshow tits, well.......but not this day! I was in a polka dancing, sausage and sauerkraut, vino influenced ecstacy. After a few more bottles and a few thousand more Pennsylvania Polkas, the seven of us made a very mature and grand exit from town: blasting “A little bit of chicken fried, cold beer on a Friday night” and singing the lyrics as loud as we could out of the window to all unfortunate enough to be within earshot. I barely escaped wetting myself from laughing so hard when my sister changed the country song’s lyrics from “a pair of jeans that fit just right” to “a pair of tits that look just right” as we gleefully bandwagoned back to camp to grill, drink some more and catch the Card's game.


That’s when I should have started easing on the brakes instead of promoting myself to whiskey spiked hot cocoa and Southern Comfort.


It was a free fall from there. Blame it on the Cardinals.


At that point, Dave knew better than to start micro managing my alcohol. Still, I recognized that “Oh Shit” look as soon as my verbal skills became muddled and the plunging of my voice’s octaves could’ve a made me a perfect voice over for a Slim Jim commercial.


As we sat around the camp fire, I went through every emotion of the classic drunk: I cried when my sister sang a song that on a sober day, I would’ve considered Emo and suicidally bizarre. My hysterical laughter was unnecessarily loud and lengthy to the point of embarrassed discomfort. I became argumentative on otherwise inconclusive topics such as Crossfit and 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon and I got mad at Dave because he wouldn’t sit by me, claiming the “smoke was drifting in that direction”. And was it ever! A pull of straight whiskey from the bottle quickly quenched my lighthearted and jovial outlook and I suddenly morphed into Billy Bad-ass. As the neighboring partiers were seemingly closing in via four wheeler, I told everyone not to worry. I would simply send em back with my swift ninja finesse. They never did get close enough but if Leatherface himself came barreling out of the woods armed with a Chainsaw, I would’ve taken him. I challenged one of the guys to push ups, which was a miserable failure on my part and proudly proclaimed that I was the biggest bad-ass of the group.


And then I stumbled up the path, falling twice on the way, to the garaged sleeping quarters and somehow located the air mattress. At 11 o’clock. Some bad-ass


I managed to drag myself through Sunday morning. My senses materialized one by one, until I finally acquired all five sometime around 4 o’clock. My teeth stopped hurting, my facial features returned to normal, my headache went away and as soon as my lingual skills were in tact enough to communicate, I swore off alcohol for the rest of the decade.


Dave simply smirked when he saw the full glass of wine nestled next to me as I type this.


Well, since I don’t have an intravenous banana bag handy, I guess a little “hair of the dog” will just have to do.