Disclaimer: This story is a hell of a lot funnier when you see me tell it in person. That being said, I'm not about to vlog or youtube or whatever the noun-used-as-a-verb for that is, so you'll have to settle for this until the day comes that we are in the same place at the same time and you buy me a beer or glass of wine.
Disclaimer #2: I subscribe to a few different policies in life. One is that we are all responsible for our own actions. If you don't want people knowing about something you said or did, don't do or say it. That being said we are each only responsible for ourselves. There are other people involved in this story and they got into about as much trouble as I did. Their names will not be included nor will any personal information about them other than what may be relevant to the story. Most of you probably wouldn't know them anyways, but God forbid someone is looking for a job or something and their future employer Googles their name and on page 123 of the search this blog comes up he or she doesn't get a job because of me. I'd feel bad. Another policy I subscribe to is that you have to laugh at yourself sometimes. I have no problem telling y'all all of my worst stories, because they all add up to who I am today. That, and I think they're freaking hilarious.
Now, the story:
I believe this was back in 2007. I'm a graduate of the University of Arizona, rival of the Phoenix-area based Arizona State University. Every year they battle for the Territorial Cup, the name of the trophy given to the winner of the UA/ASU football game, usually played in November.
I'm too damn old to go to the games now, but I always enjoy watching them at the house or with some friends.
Well for the game in 2007 Wifey and I decided to hang out with our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Friend. The Friends and Wifey are graduates of ASU (boo!) and we may give each other shit every now and again, but we all knew that it would be a friendly night. The plan is made to go to Mill Ave which is the main drag near ASU with all the bars, restaurants, weirdos, etc (there's one of these by every college, you know what yours is). I honestly don't remember which bar we were at, but we got there well before the game started (to make sure we got a table during the game) and started drinking almost immediately.
Now, I know I said that I'd keep most of the personal information about the Friends out of this story, but there are a couple of important things to note. Mr. Friend is much bigger than I am, in both height and weight. He's a big dude. Also, he's of Irish ancestry and can definitely drink like it. Well out of some kind of male ego/pride thing I don't turn down a single drink offered all night. These offers were usually in the form of "Hey, I'm getting another one. You want one too?" Needless to say the beers (and couple of shots) hit me much harder and faster than they hit Mr. Friend. That was the first mistake of the night (don't fret, there will be plenty more!)
Well, my Cats lost. Oh well. By that point in time I had had way too much to care. We were all having a blast and the alcohol was flowing freely. At this point Wifey and Mrs. Friend excused themselves to go to the overcrowded, line-out-the-door, ladies' room.
Now those of you that have had a bit of interaction with me may have noticed that I can be a bit of a flirt. Hell I even flirted with a guy to try and taste a reserve wine once. Well I had had quite a bit to drink and Wifey had been away on her bathroom trek for at least 10 or 15 seconds and Mr. Friend and I had started to talk to the people at the neighboring tables. And, yes, by people I mean these two girls.
As mentioned, Mr. Friend is of Irish decent, so I throw on my best Irish accent (which is horrible and probably flows between Irish, Scottish, English and Australian, with a thick bit of regular every day American in there) and tell the girls that Mr. Friend is my cousin. A couple of other things you should know: Mr. Friend's family has been in the US for generations. He grew up in Southern Arizona and if he has any accent at all, it's just a small trace of Mexican. I, similarly, am descended from immigrants from many many generations back and if I have any accent at all, it is, also, a very small trace of Mexican. The difference is that mine comes from my extended family. My point: I was the brownest Irishman this girl had ever seen. But did I care about this detail? Of course not! In fact, I'm pretty sharp on my feet, alcohol saturated brain or not!
So I told this gal, in my best Irish accent, "Me mum is from County Cork, Ireland (where Mr. Friends ancestors are from) and me dad is Mexican, that's why I'm so dark and me last name is Valdez." She was totally eating this up and my bud Mr. Friend was playing along quite well. I don't know what it is about dumb drunk ASU coeds, but they're a lot of fun to mess with. So this little girl and I are just chatting away... I'm telling her (in my accent), "Yeah people still tell me that they can hear the Irish accent a bit but I'm not sure they're telling me the truth." Her: "Oh I can totally hear it!" Me (acting embarrassed and shy with a dumb grin on my face and my hands covering my eyes, and then putting the accent on thicker): "Oh, no, don't tell me that" Her (touching my shoulder): "No, it's totally cute though!"
"Ahem," says Wifey.
"Oh! And this is me wife!"
Wifey was cool about it though. She knows that I just like to f*** with people for my own entertainment and she knows that I flirt sometimes, but that it's always innocent.
Coincidentally we left that particular bar soon after...
So drunk off our asses, we strolled to another bar down Mill and met up with Mr. Friends other friends. I remember telling one of them that I thought he looked a lot like Grant Imahara. But I digress... At bar #2 I go up to order a drink and give the bartender my card to run a tab and take my drink to the table. Everyone's talking and hanging out and planning our next destination. I don't remember if it was within walking distance or if someone was sober but I do remember that we were going to get something to eat. Next thing I know one of the bouncers walks up to our table, points at me and says "That guy's gotta go." It was so sudden and random that we kinda thought he was joking, but he said it again and wouldn't give a reason why. Not wanting to cause trouble and knowing that we were leaving anyways, we just agreed and got up to leave. My guess is they may have got me confused with someone else in the bar or something, but really, none of us could figure out why he singled me out.
No worries, right? Oh, shit! My card...
So I go back to get my card and the bartenders are fucking with me now... not remembering me, not being able to find the card... and the bouncer is getting impatient. I can sense his frustration, so I ask Wifey if she'll grab the card for me. She agrees and I leave the bar.
Here's where we take a quick break in the story. The next paragraph I'm going to write in a different color. This is, chronologically, what happens next, but I have no idea that any of it is happening. My the time the color turns back to normal is where my awareness returns (no I didn't black out, this all happened away from me). Rather than be George Lucas and dictate to you how you'll read the story, I'll leave it up to you. You can skip to the white and then go back and read the red to experience the night the way I did or you can continue reading in chronological order. Okay, back to the action:
Mr. Friend (being a very big, very tough guy) stands in the doorway after I left and told the bouncer something along the lines of "We're not leaving without his card." They're still giving Wifey the run around about my card, saying that they don't have it or know where it is. The funny part is that I was the only one that they were trying to kick out and I willfully left, but yet because Mr. Friend was getting all macho with his "We're not leaving without his card" they decided, "Um, yes as a matter of fact, you are!" And they were more and bigger than he was. They won.
Now because these bouncers had no interest in being sporting, or fair and were concerned with only getting me and, now, Mr. Friend outside of the bar, they decided that he would be easier to remove if his shirt was pulled over his head, a la many an NHL fight.
So Mrs. Friend sees her hubby with his shirt pulled over his head and being drug outside the bar and starts screaming and crying. I tell her not to worry, that I'll go over and politely and respectfully tell the bouncers that I was the guy they were trying to kick out, and that this dude was an innocent bystander. So I go over the the bouncer and try to tell him, "Excuse my kind sir. You and your associate were originally concerned with me, not this gentleman. We all have agreed to leave your fine establishment, at your behest, and are now pursuing vittles. Please let this fine gentleman go and we shall be on our way." That's why I tried to tell him. As you may or may not have caught onto by now, I had had quite a bit to drink. So instead, it came out kinda like, "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and that coupled with my touching his shoulder ended in one of his friends coming to his aid and my face getting to know the sidewalk really well.
Now I know I've been trying to go chronologically, but I think it is important to note that I called a police friend of mine before we went to Mill and told him that we were headed there to watch the game. He advised me not to and said that he'd be working that night, but he'd be working about 2 miles north of where we were. He said that the cops on Mill wouldn't have any patience for anyone and if we went to party in his area, we'd have more fun and no chance of anything bad happening. Now had we had this category in school, I would have been voted least likely to have a bad run in with the cops. I was a 4.0 student, engineering degree holder, and all around good kid. What could possibly happen?!? So, yeah. We didn't listen.
So now here we are with Mr. Friend and I face down on the sidewalk and me mouthing off to the bouncers because I'm really drunk and really pissed that they did this when I was just trying to talk to them. The cops come, my buddy (Mr. Officer) comes. It's way too late for him to do anything other than calm Wifey and Mrs. Friend. (Later I did tell him that he was right and I was wrong and I should listen to him from now on). Someone pepper sprayed us.
And I'm sure you can guess the rest from here...
We both spent the night in jail. I was way more drunk than he was so I was a little loud mouth and they threw me in a solitary style drunk tank, which just amplified my level of pissed off. I really didn't want to be in this little closet by myself, I started thinking of any reason I could to make them get me out, most of them inspired by television cop shows. I settled on the phone call and lawyer cliche. The only problem was I couldn't remember what law or constitutional amendment guaranteed me these rights. So I thought the best thing would be to lay down and scream through the little crack between the door and floor that I wanted my phone call and/or lawyer. When no one responded I kept yelling about how I knew my "amendment rights" and they better let me out of there. Then I passed out.
They finally came and got me and threw me into a regular cell with a fellow Wildcat fan. We were happy to see each other (I was in much better spirits now). Mr. Friend was across the little hallway and we saw each other and were like, "WTF happened?!" Then I passed out again. This time though was on the top bunk and then I woke up and they said that Wifey had bailed me out! Apparently it was morning already.
Mrs. Friend had bailed Mr. Friend out as well and we all got out and walked back to the area where the whole thing went down. We were talking about suing and owning that bar and Mrs Wifey mentioned that she was going to burn down their bar (or did she yell that the night before...I don't remember...). Well eventually we all came to our senses and found out that with a few court mandated anger management classes (for fighting...riiiiiight....) and a substance abuse class, we'd get the whole matter expunged from our record and all would be well. So that we did.
Amazingly, many of my anger management classmates had similar stories to mine ("I didn't even get in a fight!"). The instructor told us that that was why were in the class we were. Had we actually gotten into a fight or done other very bad things, we'd be in her 12 week class instead of her 7 week class (or whatever it was). So I played along. Passed with flying colors and, thank goodness, have only had one other run in with the police since (got a gun pulled on me that time...)!
Thanks for reading!
-FBW
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