Jun 1, 2021 3 min read

Whenever someone starts a sentence with “I don’t really drink,” you know you are in for a story about mighty drunken escapades. The truth is … I don’t really drink, but I did last weekend. I am still regretting it. There were unforeseen consequences.

I can’t remember the last time I drank, because I was blackout drunk and couldn’t remember.

Kidding.

I usually have a glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve. One glass to appease my fellow revelers, but spent NYE 2021 alone, watching Disney+. I didn’t even watch the ball drop in a near-empty Times Square. Instead, I feel asleep on the couch during a repeat viewing of “Thor: Ragnarok.”

I only drink socially, therefore, none of my corks popped in the pandemic. I was stone sober for a year.

Cut to: A cabin in Deep Creek, Md., just over the Pennsylvania state line. A group of recently vaccinated friends gathered. They brought wine.

Side note: The wine was not fancy. It came in a black box. It was a medium-bodied, dry red with cherry and oak flavors and notes of cardboard and amorphous plastic bag.

It gets worse.

I mixed my glass of box red with sparkling water. It’s considered a venial sin to drink wine from a box, and a mortal sin to add San Pellegrino.

It’s not the worst thing you can do to alcohol. I have an uncle who puts ice in his beer.

But I digress, like I do. The evening started innocently. It was a game night. We had pizza, board games and more alcohol than people, including the aforementioned box of red death.

I began drinking because someone started reading the rules of “Settlers of Catan.” Frankly, I’d rather chase radioactive wild pigs in Chernobyl than learn how to play “Settlers of Catan.” Instead, I partook of copious amounts of fermented grape juice cut with sparkly water.

We were 30 minutes into the instructions, when I begged for a different, simpler game.

I was a whiny wino.

We played a card game that utilizes two decks (even though I, personally, wasn’t playing with a full one). I not only managed to successfully shuffle two decks without flipping them into the air for a rousing game of 104 pick-up, but, somehow, I won the game. My still-sober friends were not amused.

After the game, I slipped, fell and injured my baby toe (the one that cried “wee, wee, wee” all the way home). I hit it so hard against the wall that the tiny, dot of a toenail – no bigger than a grain of rice – dangled precariously. As I was not in my right mind, I ripped the toenail all the way off. You would not think that something so small and insignificant would cause so much intense pain. There I was sitting on the hardwood floor of a ski lodge-style cabin in the woods, bleeding and alternately laughing and crying.

I’m sober now, but I’m walking with a slight limp and avoiding all alcohol.