We're talking about laundry habits in the drunk thread (wooo drunk thread!), and Kubla just mentioned how he didn't even have sheets--let alone wash them--in his freshman year. That got me thinking, and cringing, about some of my own habits from my college days. -Bagels, peanut butter, and Cheerios made up about 80% of my diet. -I would be absolutely shitfaced, blackout drunk on Fireball whiskey by about 5 pm every Friday and not have so much as a beer the rest of the week. To my credit, I only passed out early once or twice and typically kept my shitfacedness going until the wee hours of the morning. -With six of us sharing a kitchen, you had to take out the trash if your piece of garbage made the pile fall over. By that I mean once the garbage can was clearly full, we would keep piling shit on top... until it fell over. With two feet of exposed banana peels, styrofoam takeout containers, coffee filters, egg shells, etc., I would be perfectly happy leaving it all there, attracting flies and stinking, if I could balance my hot pocket wrapper on top. -Oh, and hot pockets were the other 20% of my diet. FOCUS: Looking back on those magical/disgusting years, what are some habits you can't believe you had? It doesn't just have to do with cleanliness and a general lack thereof, it can be anything. What kinds of things did you regularly do from 18-21 that you would never do now? Eating habits, fashion sense, how you treated people, taste in music, etc.
Ages 18-20 I lived a shockingly healthy lifestyle for a college kid. I didn't eat any junk food, worked out 2-3 times a day, went to bed at somewhat reasonable times, didn't pull all nighters and kept the booze to Friday and Saturday night. When I switched schools the wheels fell off the wagon. - We drank every night, and I don't mean "had a couple beers", we got absolutely hammered just about every night. It was incredibly common to wake up finding piss, blood and/or vomit on our floor on a weekday morning. - We ate ramen pretty much every day, I think looking at the stuff would give me a stomach ache right now. - We ate pizza pretty much every day, we would have it during the day often, and always had a few dollar slices while drunk at 2 AM, every night. - We stayed up until about 5 AM every night. - We used our sink as a urinal. - My bedroom looked like an episode of hoarders, I had a few strategically places bare spots so I could hop my way to my bed, but otherwise it was a total mess. Not surprisingly when I graduated college I had put on about 40 pounds and it took me forever to adjust to a normal schedule.
Here goes: - Go out to places, like clubs and bars, to make other people happy and try hard to please others in general. I'd do that then, and continued to do that until I was into my late 20's. Then I realised that I could just not go and tell everyone to fuck off. I'm much happier now, honestly. Some people are just born loners and need time to figure that out. Also, I do not feel sick every day now (I'd typically feel ill for more than a day after beer or whiskey), which is a plus. This partially ties in with my next one, which was... - Eating bread and stuff with wheat in, simply because I didn't know better as filler, which also contributed to feeling ill every day. I could never understand why I always felt sick and was completely unaware that I might have a wheat allergy. I go pretty hungry quite often now, because EVERYTHING here has wheat in it - just today, I saw a loaf of bread that said "soft rye bread" on it - I read the ingredients and, BAM, wheat flour. FUCK.YOU. I don't even really miss booze - at least I can still drink rum... That's the two biggest ones. I'll add others if I can think of them.
My diet was atrocious. I had a super fast metabolism so I could eat whatever I pleased. Typical dining hall meals my first few years included: -Tacos with cheese sauce, salad drenched in ranch, and a side of fries...with ranch. -Pasta without marinara sauce, and instead with multiple cheeses mixed in. -And twice a week, full plates of wings and potato skins on particular nights. -Id also buy big bags of the flavored pretzel nuggets and crush them between meals. Once I moved into an apartment, my diet got worse, and not cause of money. I just had no idea. Standbys... -Microwave burritos slathered in sour cream -Hot dogs with cheese melted...with sour cream -Full bags of salt and vinegar kettle chips, to the point my mouth would be raw. -Fried rice -Nachos and taco salads from the best dining hall on campus for lunch...still with tons of cheese sauce. I didn't change it up till I started working out and seeing no results. I was skinny and had abs all through college, but I couldn't gain weight when i was lifting till I realized my diet was FUBAR. I put on close to 20 lbs the first two years out of college simply from consistent and calculated nutrition. Drinking habits weren't terrible. I drink less now, obviously, but I drink smarter and even when shithoused, end up feeling much better the next day. Something most of my friends can't say. Fashion was amusing. I've always been clothes conscious, but the fit of alot of my clothes were terrible, and I did an awesome job of pairing stupid items together to make it look "quirky" but it didn't work. But trends change. I don't know if anyone looks at themselves 5-10 years ago and thinks they were well dressed.
Favourite boredom drinking game: Indoor Ricochet Death Frisbee. It was what it was. And MAN was it a stupid thing to do.
A big part of it is just aging; even now I'll see clothes that I would still wear if I was still 18 that I recognize I shouldn't now.
- I would dump a bottle of A1 sauce on a plate and go through an entire loaf of bread dipping it in. - Eating microwaved food for ten meals straight. Then I would order delivery. - I'd sometimes go a month without washing my bathroom towel. Granted you're only using to dry off your clean body, but that's still pretty disgusting. - Went about a year without ever folding my clothes. I would just put them on from the hamper after they were washed, and the throw them all back in when it was time to do the laundry again. - Only got a hair cut once every four months and didn't bother combing. I'd just mat it down when I got out of the shower. - Not me, but a friend would get smashed while watching tv/playing xbox and just leave the empty liquor and beer bottles all over his bedroom floor. You literally had to shuffle through them when you walked into the room. He was on the school volley ball team and somehow managed to hook up in there despite this.
What I wouldn't give to be able to go out and bust heads for 80 minutes without feeling like I've been run over by a truck for the next 3 days. Rugby is a younger man's game.
We used to play Louisville Chugger in the kitchen, which usually ended how you think it would. Focus: -Drunk texting/dialing people like a jackass all the time -Washing bed sheets and towels was almost unheard of -Spending $20 on a T-shirt was a good deal, as long as it looked cool -I used to go through a case of ice beer (preferably Natural Ice) and a 1.75L of this shit every single weekend: Spoiler ... and I thought it was decent, good vodka too. I'm feeling hung over just looking at it.
I was saved from myself in many ways by lack of money. I couldn't afford to go off the rails too much, and was busy working my ass off at several jobs while going to college for a science degree. Now, I drink more, eat more (and shittier), and, objectively, work less. I am less patient and more irritable as a general rule. I would go out of my way back then to be polite, even to people who were dicks. Now I give less of a fuck. Honestly, I think I'd be better off if I went back to some of the habits I had 20 years ago.
I guess as far as grossness the lack of kitchen cleaning was the worst. Always dishes stacked up and pans soaking in filth water for weeks on end. It's a wonder things like the plague don't show up more often around college campuses. Speaking of the plague we had a mouse problem when I had roommates and I was disposing of two or three a day for a while from the trap in our pantry. I heard it go off once, cleaned it, then an hour or so later it went off again and caught two at the same time in one trap... I also had roaches at my last place because of the mess and the dilapidated openness to the elements. At two consecutive houses we started off in each with decent back yards with fire pits we thought were going to be cool late night hang outs. But my roommate and I both had dogs that we never cared to clean up after when we let them out back. After a few weeks there wasn't a place to step in the back yards that didn't have shit piles on it. That used to put a lot of people off when they saw it. As for drinking besides just not being able to handle 3+ days of drinking in a row anymore or being able to kick a hang over in under a day, I just can't handle liquor like I used to. Im starting to black out after four beers and three or four liquor drinks, which has become my normal nights. I used to be able to drink a twelve pack and half a fifth before I blacked out. Or had to take like 12 shots. There was a period my sophomore-junior year where I was getting liquor bottles and killing them in half an hour or so and then just blacking out/passing out on the spot. That shit was just stupid. Never mind the retard shit that is Hairy Buff...
Yup, I used to do this too; not only the sink, but the shower too. And I don't mean "Took a whiz while I was taking a shower," (Which I still do) I mean "Walked past a fully functioning toilet and pissed in the shower." Why did I do it? I don't know. Maybe it was the novelty of peeing in a different place, maybe it was a protest against society's restrictions (an argument could be made that I was actually saving water by not flushing the toilet); who knows. But I don't do it anymore. I also used to eat cereal ALL THE TIME, for every meal of the day. I would even keep a box of it behind the seat in my truck for a snack. This stopped after I got married.
My drinking habits haven't changed that much, Milwaukee and Natural Light are regular beers for me. My vodka and rum choices have been upgraded though.
Adventures in the first apartment. What a time. Here goes: Our landlord's initials when arriving in the mail was P. Enis. So my roommate El Nino would call him up every time and bark "Hey, PENIS! Your mail is here!" into his voicemail. He was an unabashed drunk. While out on our balcony, we watched him in the cold light of day blast his Econoline van over the curb of our parking lot, peeling through the boulevard and crashing into the wall of the building. He was there to pick up the rent five days early. We slamed the door in in face. We had the trademark "Pizza box tower". There was a cheap place near Fanshawe college that served great pizza. They were too wide for the garbage chute, and we weren't carrying them down three floor that would be too much work. They served great for drunken jenga tackling dummies. Not one piece of furniture came within a country mile of matching. Naugahyde blue Barcalounger who you could cheap-shot with it's guillotine-fast footrest eject. Paisley fold-out couch that was older than water. A wall unit built by the people who designed Olympic Stadium. The walls painstakingly decorated with nothing. Our centerpiece that brought the room together was El Nino's giant ashtray-on-a-stand, the most used piece of equipment in the house. And speaking of equipment, lots of video game systems, usually two hooked up to each of the three televisions. The day we moved in, the guy on the first floor yelled at us for making noise. We deemed him offensive and played a game-- a game only to be played while getting bombed-- to see how many beer caps you could get inside his patio shrub before he noticed them. When dropped right, they disappear into the bush. We dropped at least seventy in there, and for some reason we never heard about it. While I had an actual bed (with sheets) and dressers, El Nino's room was not even a bedroom. He dozed on a sheetless double air mattress that made noise like a horny whale whenever there was movement, all his clothes were hung in the closet and his TV stand was a giant fat-back balancing on the stand of a former coffee table (the table's glass had been shattered and discarded). Beers that went around: Labatt 50, Labatt Blue, Wildcat Strong, Miller Gen, Corona, Lakeport Pilsner The hallway garbage chute served as emergency vomit capsule and secondary urinal. Fire hose served as Feats Of Strength tug-o-war rope. Elevator served as twenty-second Thunderdome. Countless rude awakenings. I have been launched across a room while asleep, leg dropped, had a tub of coco butter dumped on my face, beaten with boxing gloves and gas peddled. I've done some shit back as well, horrible things.
Between 18 and 21 was one of the points in my life I actually had my shit together. Well, other then smoking dope from the moment I woke up till my head hit the pillow at night. I had a good job up in Alaska working on a government contract (Yay Bacon-Davis wages.) Most of my co-workers were much older and married, so I had very little chance to get in trouble other then pissing off my neighbors whenever the mood struck me. Now that I think about it, the mood struck me quite often. The downstairs neighbors got to loud and my roommate and I lifted our couch to the ceiling and dropped it. Repeatedly. After the 10th or so repeat there was an angry pounding at the door and when I opened it, there stood my little tiny neighbor with ceiling pop corn all over him. I started laughing. He was fuming and couldn't even form words..."BLADGHER FUCKER GRAFTREF!" I just continued to laugh till he stomped back down the stairs. Other times, just because I hated the little fucker downstairs, I would turn my huge speakers to the floor, turn up all the bass on my stereo along with the volume and leave for a few hours. Just because fuck that guy. I don't even remember what he did to piss me off initially, but it must of been something. (The owner of the building was a friend of mine, I would've had to burn the place to the ground to get evicted.) When we moved out after 2 1/2 years in the apartment it cost us $14K. Every stick of furniture had to be replaced, the carpet, the toilet, all the dishes (They were furnished with the apartment), some of the sub floor, the deck (I set it on fire one night) and most of the kitchen appliances. Shit. Until I started thinking about it, in my memory I had my shit together back then. That's sad, because shit really went off the rails when I came back from Alaska with a bunch of money in my pocket and decided being a musician was my true calling.
My grimiest was when I lived off campus in college. My school was pretty rural, so the houses nearby had plenty of woods and land to fuck around on. -We had no sink or any kitchen stuff so the end of the week we would take all of the paper plates and plastic utensils used during the week and burn them in our fire pit in the backyard. Thats how we did our dishes. The ground became so polluted, that when we were moving out and had to clean up the firepit, we planted sod and fertilizer and grass still didnt grow there. -We had a throne in our garage made of spent Keystone Light cans that we reinforced with plywood. It eventually got thrown off the roof. -Our landlord was a dick and never fixed our washing machine, but we had a working dryer. So to wash my clothes, I would take all the dirty stuff into the shower with me and scrub out the grime by rubbing them on my body as I showered. -We had a spare bedroom we called the "messy room." No one ever went in, so we just threw old or broken junk in there. When we were cleaning it out we found countless cockroaches, 2 ventriloquist dummies and a sock puppet. No one knows where they came from.
A buddy and I sometimes drank this in college. Because Mad Dog 20/20 was too expensive. Mad Dog, too expensive. Just typing that sentence gave me a headache.