Playing Drunk?

I’m a drinker.  

 It’s in my genes I guess.  

When most of my friends have fallen to the floor and are well below the “under the table” limit, I’m usually starting on my second liter of bourbon.  I sat through my terrible twenty’s – like most average American college men – on a bar stool in front of a big screen blaring the evening’s staple sporting event or tossing cards back and forth across a sticky table. And I guess all of that has never lost it’s novelty to me. I enjoy hanging out with friends with a cold adult beverage between us probably more than anything or anyone else. 

But I have noticed something recently.

There are a lot of drinking games out there. 

 Maybe in my twenty-something trance I missed the arrival of the parlor games that are designed to inspire us to imbibe. Maybe like the finest micro-brewed lager, I am maturing and see little principle in party games pushing me to purge. I like to drink but I drink to drink, and I don’t need a cute card trick or crap shoot to inspire my thirst.

Sometimes, in fact, I just enjoy sitting on the couch and doing nothing besides sipping on a cool glass of white wine (don’t laugh – I like all alcohols).  

Without a doubt, if you, like me, are a drinker, you have noticed two of the most admired and accepted of these games. 

Corn Hole:

Corn Hole, Corn Toss, Bags, Bean Bag Toss, Tumor Toss, Sacks and Holes, or Baggo is a game that has actually been around a while. It is a stylized version of Horse Shoes – a game my grandfather played with great affinity.The game is designed around a wooden (or sometimes plastic) case with a hole cut out of the middle.

 

Players pitch (“Kareem”, “Ali”, “Pancake”, “Frisbee”)” bean bags from pre-determined distances and attempt to get them to land in the hole.  

The variations are wide depending upon your geographical location and player’s personalities and officially drinking is not intertwined in the game – but is almost always done in tandem with the game – making your “bevy” a little dizzying, and certainly, all the more fun.   

But that’s the point.  

Beer (or your drink of choice) makes things fun – games, like Corn Hole don’t make Beer fun. The game I describe below, however, is often treated as a way in which to add entertainment to beer (as if its record of hundreds of years of entertaining people does not speak for itself) or at least a necessity to have when drinking beer.  

Beer Pong:

Beer Pong, Bing Bong or Beirut, depending on where you are from, is one of the most popular party games and now that many bars have picked it up it’s no longer just a chance competition at your neighbor’s birthday party. There is even a website that sells beer pong gear and a world series of beer pong, held last month in Nevada.  

http://www.bpong.com/ 

For those who feel that drinking is not your cup of – well, whatever – then think of Beer Pong as a combination of ping-pong, winning goldfish at a carnival, and drinking. The game itself involves two triangles of plastic cups, two ping-pong balls, two plastic cups filled with water to rinse off dirty balls, and a beer pong table usually made from plywood – though, in warmer months I have even seen bedroom doors used.

The rules to Beer Pong or Beirut are flexible as long as all players agree on a consistent set. I found a fairly popular version of the rules at http://beirut-guide.com/rules/basic.php. 

         

But maybe that is the problem.  

Rules?  

Rules to drinking?

The only drinking rules that I know of usually have something to do with not spilling your drink on your date, or not falling asleep when your roommate owns a blow-up doll and his friend has a really good digital camera and they both have a higher tolerance than you. I have never needed a game to make drinking more fun for me. I have always been quite satisfied to have a few with friends, one or two by myself on the deck of my house after work or at the game.

But some of the ‘kids’ today rocket to attention when you mention the words “beer pong” or, worse yet, they respond just as quickly with “howa ‘bout a game of corn hole” when you just mention the word “beer” – as if they need to be playing something or doing something or distracted in some way while they drink.

Again maybe I am old fashioned but, give me a cold beer on a hot day and I just don’t need much else.

Maybe it is our fast-food eating, instant gratification needing, all-about-entertainment society. I mean have you seen how many button are actually on a video game remote control lately?

 

How do those kids handle all of those buttons?

They only have ten fingers!

Of course, maybe I was a little intoxicated the last time I watched someone play a video game.

But my first concern here is that we may now live in such a society wrought with Attention Deficit Disorder and needy, over-stimulated people that the simple things are not fun any more – even the things that are built, created to be fun are not enough to keep us occupied – we must add more.

Have you ever been to New York City?  

Did you ever go to those little hot-dog stands that would be placed randomly on every corner?

I remember years ago going and throwing a quick squirt of mustard on my dog and trotting on down the sidewalk being there and gone so quickly that I barely remembered that I stopped.  

Well, today, there are lines at these things. Now, maybe there are lines there because everyone else has found out my secret – but I doubt it.

Look at the condiments on these things today. It is no longer acceptable just to grab a quick boiled hot-dog and run.  

Nope.

You have to add, mustard, catsup, cheese, relish, chili, a drink, chips, a “chocolate chunk” cookie (I do love those – they really have chunks in them). Hell, you can even use your credit card at some of these things now.

Why is it that we can no longer be satisfied?

I do think it is our culture. 

I think we have become a culture that needs to be constantly entertained.  

And I believe that more American families would do better to tone down the level of ultra-entertainment we experience and allow ourselves to experience each day – and maybe – just maybe – drinking would go back to drinking – where it should be.

There is another concern as well, however.

One reason God made drinking so much fun on its own is because he wanted us to be entertained just by beer – nothing else. He knew that if we were further distracted while we were enjoying our imbibing that we would forget to take better care of ourselves.

Drinking must be done with caution. And drinking games like beer pong are designed only with the goal of getting wasted in mind. They were not created with respect for individual tolerance differences and must certainly contribute to the 1,400 national drinking deaths a year. 

Studies abound about how binge drinking is on the rise. 

 http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Mar15/0,4670,CollegesSubstanceAbuse,00.html  

Here is a great one form Harvard. 

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cas/   

http://men.webmd.com/news/20021231/adult-binge-drinking-on-rise 

And these games where the goal and the score are both designed around drinking are dangerous – particularly when those games also involve many different people with many different levels of tolerance.

I know my limits, my borders and boundaries.

I knew them even that time I passed out on the banks of the river near my house (I obviously decidedly exceeded my limits that eve).

And that is why I don’t require a ping-pong match to drive me to drink.

Being drunk is one thing.

Being stupid is another.

Being both at the same time is not a game – it’s deadly.

But now that I have got the serious stuff out of the way, I am going to go have a scotch.

Sláinte!