I was thinking back to high school again and remembering that I only had a father on weekends. He was attach posted to NDHQ in Ottawa which means that he worked in Ottawa during the weekend and would come on home Friday evening. It was always weird to have a part time father during that time. But there were some up sides, I was the only kid in my town that could get my hands on the best punk rock fanzines. He would stop and pick them up for me from a news/magazine store on Rideau. Occasionally my mother would take off for a weekend and spend it in the city to get up to whatever obsurd shit adults do. This would leave us to fend for ourselves over the weekend. There were two occasions where a party developed in my house:

1. Party one, and arguably the most ridiculous happened when Jeff got it into his head that we should invite a bunch of our friends over to hang out. (fucking Jeff). So word got out and a few of our punk/grunge friends show up at the house. Things are going well, we have a few beers and listen to some tunes and are just being generally mellow and having a good time. At some point the party sort of splits in two, one group of us is in the living room and the second group has moved down to the basement. I at some point hear a lot of laughing coming from the basement so I venture down to find out what’s so funny. Here is where shit goes sideways. Jeff has convinced people to let him knock them out by spinning them around a dozen or so times, then putting them in the sleeper hold. Thus effectively cutting off their airway and temporarily knocking them out. They are telling me that they get a cray head rush from it. Not unlike the first time you smoke a cigarette. So they are all taking turns doing this. The next thing I know I am smelling some sort of chemical fumes coming from the same area. They’ve now moved on from the spinning/sleeper knockout move, to sniffing paint or chemicals, or glue or whatever they have located in my Dad’s workshop that happened to be down there. This has now turned into a “glue sniffing” party? WTF?

Fast forward to the next day…..the party cleared out late and now I am left to deal with the clean up of said silliness. I have am pleasantly surprised to wake up to a somewhat tidy household. I don’t have a ton of stuff to do. Except for one small thing…..the whole house smells like some sort of chemical factory. Which I had sort of grown accustomed to and didn’t notice until I went outside for a bit. When I went back in the house the smell hit me like a ton of bricks. I had to run around and open every single window and I lit a bunch of candles. In the basement I burned a bunch of incense to try to get the smell out of the place. Now I like to think that any reasonable adult would react accordingly to coming home to a house that smells like stale beer and dubes….but fucking paint thinner and glue? ….. fucking Jeff

2. The second party is much more normal, at least as far as my life goes. I once again have the place to myself and decide to invite a few friends over for beers and music. I have a few friends show up and things are going well (again…famous last words). I had a friend named Jimmy who used to go to the Canex on the base and buy a beer making kit. His parents never seemed to care as long as he was only drinking them in their house. Jimmy used to make this home brew in 500ml bottles and he would sell it to us for 2 bucks a shot. Now this stuff was NOT good beer, but it was cheap and had a very high alcohol content. The only problem was that you had to plug your nose to get it down, other wish the smell would make it taste like shit. (what the hell was wrong with us?). We had a cooler full of this stuff and were having a good time. That’s when shit went sideways…again!

Out of nowhere I start to get a few more people showing up. People that I haven’t invited and barely know. They start telling me that word has gotten out to bunch of other people from other highschools. And now it’s out there that this is to be a keg party. I get this idea to shut the party down, well sort of. I shut down all the lights and get everyone down to the basement. There is a knock on the door and I go and open it and there is 3 pickup trucks full of these big jocks from the other highschool wanting to come in. NOPE! I tell them there is no party and they start flipping out threatening to kick the door in. They clearly want in to this non-existent kegger. I threaten to call the police and they finally get the hint and back down and pile into the trucks and leave. Phwew…..Jimmy pass me a skunky dirty beer….

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