Story 7: A celebration I would like to forget but can't

    Sometimes I feel like I never left high school. Considering that I’ve worked as a High School teacher for many years, in effect I never did.

  The night I graduated was very special. After the ceremony at C.W. Post, I went with three of my friends, Bruce, Dan, and Keith to a local comedy club.  First we drank some pitchers of beer and then tried our first Long Island ice teas. My friends didn’t really like them, however  after I drank four of them I remarked,

  “These taste just like ice tea, in fact I don’t even taste the alcohol.”

Little did I know home much alcohol they actually had.

  Our next stop was the former Scobee diner in Little Neck, Queens. There are some interesting facts about that diner. For example, a former CIA director once worked there. In addition, I once got into a fight there and  broke a stink bomb in the lobby one New Year’s eve.  

  Speaking of Little Neck, another time when I was out to dinner in Israel I remember seeing little neck clams on the menu.

  “Wow, I can’t believe it, all the way from Little Neck, Queens.”

A woman next to me replied, “No honey, that’s just the size of the clam.”

  I didn’t know what to say so I just smiled and kept quiet.

The night of my graduation I remember that when we got to the Scobee I ordered my usual late night meal of pancakes. We enjoyed our meal and on the way out I saw my brother Dan with one of his friends.

“Hi Dan.” I said in a voice way too loud.

My brother took one look at me and said to my friends, “Just make sure he gets home in one piece.”

  I waved good bye and we headed home in my friend’s Volvo.  The diner was only a short distance from my friend’s  house in Long Island. All of a sudden, I felt sick and ended up throwing up all over the back seat of my friend Dan’s car.  

  “Shit.” Dan called out.

  “Open the window.” Bruce yelled.

I looked down at the seats and floors of the car that were now covered in pancake vomit, and worst of all, so was I.   Well, I thought, at least it wasn’t a fish fry. I don’t even remember how I made it home.

  The next morning I woke up and experienced my first hangover. My head was splitting and the room was spinning. A few hours later I called my friends to see if everything was ok.

  My friend Dan said that cleaning the vomit was like the scene in Pulp Fiction when John Travolta and Samuel Jackson have to scrape brain out of the backseat of a car.

The worst part of my the story was not how sick I felt the next day, or the fact that I desecrated my friends car, but that his sister Stephanie, for years would call out to me whenever we would drive somewhere,

“Don’t forget to roll down the windows.”

Life Lesson Seven: Someone once said an elephant never forgets, but I would argue humans have the longest memory of all especially when you do them wrong. So, do the right thing always, and when in doubt, keep those windows open, or simply your mouth shut.