The One Thing You Can't Replace

Another story I heard about myself

This one happend in high school

We had this teacher in high school whose kid went to our high school

His name was Mr Macnimara

And his son Jake Macnimara went to our high school

He was a sophomore when I was a senior

So he was two years behind me

And Mr Macnimara was an asshole

And one weekend he and his wife decided to leave town

Which you should never do if you're an asshole

And Jake Macnimara decided to throw a party at the teacher's house

Hurrah!

And everyone around town heard about it

And we all got up individually and thought:

Okay, let's go over there and destroy the place

I walked into this party, everyone I had ever met was there

And everyone was drinking like it was the end of the world

People were drinking like it was the civil war

And a doctor was coming to saw our legs off

It was totally unsupervised

We were like dogs without horses, we were running wild

I walked down

I walk down to the basement

They had a pool table in the basement

One dude took a running start

And threw his body onto the pool table and broke it in half

Another kid found out which room was Mr Macnimara's

And went upstairs and took a shit on his computer

So the party was going great

I'm standing in the basement and I'm holding a red cup

You've seen movies

And I'm standing there, and I'm holding a red cup

And I'm starting to black out

And I guess someone said like: "something, something police"

And in a brilliant moment of word association

I yelled "fuck da police!"

"Fuck da police!"

And everyone else joined in

A hundred drunk white children yelling: "fuck da police"

With the confidence of guys who have like already been to jail

And aren't afraid of it anymore

You know that like

"I served my nickle, you come and take me" confidence

But white children

The reason someone had said:

Something, something police" was because the police were there

So a Chicago police officer walked down the stairs

And got to the bottom of the basement

And looked out over a sea of drunk toddlers yelling

"Fuck da police" in his face

And he was almost impressed

He was like: "wow"

And then he leaned into his walkie-talkie and went: "get the paddy wagon"

And my friend John, who is now a father this man now has a baby

He grabbed a 40, smashed it on the ground, and yelled "scatter!"

But everyone ran in a different direction

We all ran in different directions

It was like that scene in Rataouille when the humans come in the kitchen

And all the rats go in different ways

We all ran in different directions

I ran into the laundry room

And I jumped on the washing machine

And I crawled out through a window into the backyard

And now I'm running through the backyard and there's this big chain-linked fence

And I thought "I've never climbed a fence that high before"

And then I woke up at home

On Monday, I went to school

Because that's what we did back then

And I'm walking into the school building and who do I see

But Jake Macnimara

And he says to me "hey, were you at my party on Saturday?"

And I said "no" you know, like a liar

And he said "things got really out of hand

Someone broke the pool table

Someone took a shit on my dad's computer"

"But the worse thing", he says

"The worse thing is that someone stole these old antique photos of my grandmother

And my parents are freaking out about it"

And I had that thought

That only black out drunks and Steve Urkel can have

Did

Did I do that?

I figured no, I wouldn't have done that

But I was never sure until, two years later

Relax

I'm playing video games with this kid named Alex

That we also went to high school with

Two years later, we've graduated by now

We're playing video games for a couple hours

And then Alex says to me:

"Hey, come here, I want to show you something"

And then he takes me into his bedroom

And then he takes me into a side room off of his bedroom

Never a good thing to have

He shows me a tiny room that is covered wall to wall

In stolen antique photos from different people's parties over the years

And I said: "why?"

"Why do you do this?"

And Alex said: "because it's the one thing you can't replace"

That's the end of that story, but how fucked up is that? right?

That's crazy!

So I don't drink anymore