Full Moon Slumber Party
A memorable early beer experience I have is a very "growing up in the mid-west with nothing better to do" tale. Me and about 6 other 13 year old girls had a slumber party at a friend's house. Her mom worked 3rd shift at the hospital so it was only her father, Fred, in charge. That night, Fred "fell asleep" face down on the floor in front of the t.v. We were "slumbering" in tents outside ... when someone went in to pee, they came out to let us know that "Fred was dead." Two of us proceeded to carefully walk through the family room over Fred and into the garage, where Fred's large refrigerator full of cans of Schlitz beer was located. The electric garage door was a broken one, where it didn't close completely to the ground, but was open just enough for the two in the garage to gently roll the Schlitz out to us. We were each armed with two Schlitz a piece and in our jammies rampaged through the neighborhood for the rest of the night... drinking the two beers, streaking, mooning, running around... and I think most of us eventually threw up! We successfully made it back to our tents before sunrise and before the mom returned from the hospital... with Fred still "asleep" face down in the t.v. room. After that experience, we found ourselves to be masters at sneaking beer. -Jen

The Strawman
While having no more than four beers total for the entire evening, I got back home from my first alcohol-friendly high school party with what, in my limited experience, was one heck of a rippin' beer buzz. Congratulating myself on having escaped the local police on the drive home, I decided to see just how well I would have fared had such a run-in occurred. I tipped my head back, closed my eyes, and extended my arms in order to attempt the trusty "finger to nose" exercise, but somehow failed to notice that I was also pitching forward. Until my jaw took the full force of a collision with the floor. With a chipped tooth and suspecting a cracked jaw, I had to suffer through a day of classes and a full-contact football practice before being able to get to a doctor by claiming a tackle-related mouth injury. While angry at beer for several days, I did wind up reconciling with several refreshing, intoxicating cans of Busch at another party the next weekend . It just happened to be through a straw. -Dui

The Gushing Graduate
I threw a mild dinner party to celebrate my college graduation. I drank a handful of beers, and all was well-and-dandy until my Greek buddy Mike discovered the Ouzo hiding in the farrrrrrr back corner of the fridge (for good reason). A few shots and several hours later, I woke up yacking. I ran to the bathroom, but didn't make it to the toilet before erupting with another go-round. To add injury to insult (literally), I slipped and fell in my own yack. This was definitely an occasion I was glad to have been sleeping alone! -Spewnonymous

Packman The Inventor
In college, my cousin became a legend among fraternities and sororities - even the "GDI" set, to which I belonged. In true fraternity style, he was known by his nickname "Pack" (both because of how many cigs he put away on a daily basis and because he was never without a six-pack), never by his given name, Shaun. Pack's claim to fame was his invention of a contraption that, because of the sheer speed at which you could get completely wasted on beer, far surpassed any other drinking game known on campus. Pack invented the "Octobong." An eight-man bong that was filled not by a can of beer at a time, but by filling a trough with gallons of beer pumped from a keg, then "bonged" by eight men at a time. Repeatedly. -Fingers

In Pour Taste
My friends - about six guys and loads of hot, surgically-enhanced women - were drinking beers at Baja Sharkeez in Newport Beach. A friend we can call "David" was leaning on one of the plastic recycle cans in the walkway. David was somewhat suave with the ladies and held a full pitcher along with the undivided attention of the big group when he suddenly fell ass first into the plastic can, effectively folding him in at the waist. His body lodged tight just in time for his arm to give way to momentum and the full pitcher's worth now pouring down his front side. To my knowledge, David never returned to Baja Sharkeez. -Bret

Take Five
One night my freshman year in college, I had just had a tiff with my girlfriend and was heading to a party by myself at a friend's house where I didn't know anybody. I was in a screw-the-world-I'll-show-her-I'm-going-to-get-pissed kind of stewing funk, so upon arriving, I cruised the party while downing an entire six-pack of Heineken in about 20 minutes. The 72 ounces slowed me down long enough to eventually end up lying flat on the floor in giddy reflection while Dave Brubeck blasted from the stereo speakers, long enough for me to think, "hey, how about that...'Take Five' is actually IN 5/4 time....whoa." A few minutes later, I stumbled out to the front yard and hurled the churning Dutch suds from my stomach into the shrubbery. So much for reckless abandon. -Isaac

Don't Have a Cow
In Charlottesville, beer was the cause of a mythical, medieval-like jousting competition on Halloween night in 1995. I was dressed as a cow, my friend Adam as Superman. We took our pool sticks and our mountain bikes, climbed to the opposite summits of asphalt hills, counted down from 5 to 1, then began our descent towards each other. We met full speed at the bottom of the hill and managed to break both pool sticks without impaling ourselves, but my friend Adam was declared winner as he did not fall from his bike. On the other hand, I was launched over my handlebars onto the asphalt - all the result of an evening drinking beer. Ahhh, the memories.... - Rich

That Special Feeling
I had been doing the usual high school driving loop through town and followed a convoy of cars and pickup trucks out to the backwoods of Indiana. I'd drunk maybe a six pack and remember standing on the bank of the Iroquois exclaiming essentially to the sky "I love this feeling! I'm going to do this all the time." A true convert. -Joe

Stick to the Beer
I remember my first beer. Or was it the 5th. It is a blur now. One event that stands out was the pledging ritual at our fraternity. As juvenile and strange as these rituals are, they do created slurred memories. We had an event that had been going on for over 50 some years that we HAD to take part in. The ritual focused around a stick. Yes a stick, placed in the mud in the middle of a field. Oh yeah and a keg of beer. The goal was to build "brotherhood". A stick and a keg equals bonding I guess.

The 26 of us were blindfolded and drove in the back of a truck to an "undisclosed" location. Upon arrival we were marched to the top of a field in the Oregon country side. Since I had only been in Oregon for about a week, it could have been anywhere for what it mattered. At the top of the hill, one of the members stuck a stick in the mud and set out the rules.

1. The Keg must NEVER stop flowing
2. You must drink as much as you can each time your turn in line came up
3. A drop of beer could not spill
4. If you were to need more room in your stomach, you had to empty any beer in your stomach onto the stick. IE the "boot stick"

Well it seemed like and easy task. I remembered back to high-school when I won the eggnog chugging contest by creatively bringing a funnel and tubing (beer bong) to school and drank a 1/2 gallon of eggnog in about 10 seconds. Dominating the competition and making myself sick for the next 24 hours.

Well enough reminiscing. As the first 1/2 hour went by we had complete control of the situation. But that was soon to pass. The Keg would own us in the end.

The first volley of beer was released from one pledge onto the stick, which quickly created a chain reaction similar to the pie eating contest in Stand by Me. Guys were running at full speed to the stick as to not break the rules, and then jumping back in line. The beer was winning, but hey weren't we getting to be better friends? As the hour came to an end, and the keg ran dry, the pile of boot had become an ocean of bile. At that point in time the keg sputtered it's last breath. We had won, even though most of us could not walk from the combo of nausea and inebriation. At this point in time, someone yelled grab the rush chair. We quickly was stripped and drug unwillingly through the pile, stick and all. Members scattered like rats with a pack of feral cats upon them.

Cheers rang out from the pledges, and we had bonded. Or that was the idea. Better yet, where were we and how were we getting home.