Time-lapsed Blogography Day: Twenty Five Years Ago Today

Twenty-five years ago today, on May 26, 1996, my crew boat had its final boat party of the year.

The evening started with a barbeque including several parents and the coach. At around 8 PM, the rowers whose parents were there told them that we were all going to see "Primal Fear" at the Bailey's Crossroad movie theater, a movie that had just come out the month before. In reality, we all ended up at the house of another rower whose parents were out of town for the weekend. 7 of 9 boat members immediately started drinking, which was surprising to me as a sheltered 16-year-old whose parties regularly featured trezur hunts, 2 liter Pepsis, and Pizza Hut. My role, as one of the 2 people not drinking that night was to prevent people from alarming the neighbors.

"Cloves" were popular back then, and there was weed as well. One boat member immediately got high and sat in the corner in his own world for the rest of the night. Three others were drunk (or peer-pressure pretending to be) within the first two hours. The first rower passed out at 10:30 with two more to follow by midnight. At least one rower peed in the yard because he couldn't maneuver his way up the stairs to the bathroom. Friends of the host who didn't do crew joined the party throughout the evening, well-stocked with the typical varieties of cheap beer you might see in a movie about a high school party.

I drove home myself around 12:20 AM once the number of people I didn't know well outnumbered my boat in the house -- as every movie and After School special will teach you, that's when the likelihood of cops increases exponentially.