I’ll admit my wife and I enjoy partaking in a few alcoholic beverages from time to time. We’re both adults and we work hard for the weekend, so, occasionally, we like to see the empty bottom of a beer can—or seven. As a couple, we have always been very responsible when it comes to drinking and driving: We simply don’t do it. We have our own little system for responsible drinking. If one of us drinks, the other drives, although the system could be more specifically described as she drinks and I drive.
There have been situations in the past where we have experienced communication problems. We’re at a party and we realize that we’ve both been drinking while assuming the other person wasn’t. On those nights, the taxi drives. The next day I pedal my beach cruiser across town looking for where we parked the truck, which is why I have a truck: It’s easy to throw the bike in the back after a night of hard drinking and taxi cab rides home. More than once my wife and I have been picked up by a taxi driver and when he asked, “Where to?” I replied, “Well, if you want to get paid for this fare, first take me to an ATM because I don’t have any cash, then to Taco Bell, then my house.”
But most of the time my wife gets to be the one who hits the sauce, and I get to be the one to drive her drunk-ass around. She has played this incredible lifelong prank on me where she has me convinced her vision is poor at night and she can’t see well enough during darkness to drive without being dangerous. Ergo, if we ever go to a party at night (which is when people have parties) I have to be the one who drives us home. I think I’m going to require her to show me a doctor’s note on this issue.
After many nights as the Designated Driver (DD), I’ve learned that being the sober one isn’t fun. In fact, it totally sucks. Drunk people are really only funny to other drunk people. When you’re not drunk, drunk humor isn’t humorous at all. It’s simply drunken stupidity.
Last week, my wife and I went to a party—yes at night—and, you guessed it, I drew the sober driver card. At the end of the night, some friends of ours, a hammered drunk married couple, were telling us goodbye and I offered them a ride.
We piled my drunk wife, whom I love, and the other drunk couple into our truck and headed to their house “less than a mile away.” It turns out you can’t trust drunk people; I discovered they lived 10 miles away. But before I could take them to the place they would spend the entire next day severely hung over, I had three people demanding that I take them to Jack in the Box.
“We’ve got to go to Jack in the Box! It’s an emergency!”
I had to ask, “Really, it’s an emergency if we don’t go to Jack in the Box?”
“Yes, alert the President! I need tacos!”
I succumbed to the drunken wishes of my wife and friends and headed to the nearest Jack in the Box while they abused me in the car: “Why are you driving so slow?” “You’re no fun!” and “This music sucks—you got any Jay-Z?”
I replied, “No, I don’t have any Jay-Z. But I have three problems and a … never mind. We are here. What do you guys want to order?”
Having three drunk people scream into your ear what their intoxicated stomachs want to consume is enough to make you open your car door and announce, “Get out! You’re all walking home. I don’t care if you’re my wife. Get to steppin’!”
But because I’m a “nice guy”—and nice guys finish last—I allowed my wife and friends to berate me and the poor kid working the Jack in the Box drive-thru at 2 in the morning.
My wife gave me her order first: “I want curly fries, and I want a half vanilla-half chocolate milkshake.”
“They don’t have that on the menu.”
“They can custom make it for me! I need it!”
“I can ask them, but my guess is the way you’re yelling at this drive-thru guy, you’re going to get a half vanilla-half saliva milkshake, with a little extra throat cheese spit in it for free.”
Then from the backseat came the ultimate drunken order, “I want 24 tacos!”
“Did I hear that correctly? Did you say 24?
“Twenty-four tacos! I want 24 tacos!”
“Alright, okay, I’ll order it. Yes, I want 24—yeah, I know—24 tacos, curly fries, and if you could be so kind as to make a mixed milkshake, half vanilla, half chocolate?”
A garbled noise came out of the speaker: “The milkshake machine is down.”
“They are lying! The milkshake machine is fine. They are just saying that to be mean to me!”
“Honey, this isn’t a conspiracy to keep you from getting a milkshake.”
Again from the back seat, “What about my tacos? I gotta have my 24 tacos. Not 23—it has to be 24!”
I tried to calm the group down: “Don’t worry; the taco machine is still working.”
“Good. Because I’ll climb through that drive-thru window and make those tacos myself if I have to.”
Luckily for me, the late night crew at Jack in the Box came through and got my belligerent friend his 24 tacos. I dropped him and his wife safely home. Then I had to hit every fast food drive-thru in town until I found a place that would get my drunk baby her half vanilla-half chocolate milkshake.
Rob Krider says, “Don’t drink and drive, kids.” The folks at Jack in the Box say, “Don’t drink and drive-thru order.”
This article appears in May 13-20, 2010.
