Kids... this is going to be one of those stories that tell a life lesson you should all pay attention to. It was a typical warm summer day at Turtle Lake in 1993. I know this because Darren, when younger, was someone who would jump all in on any recent craze. In the summer of 1993, Zima certainly fit the bill.
Darren was up, along with Terri Hanko. Terri and Darren were almost as good of friends as he and I are. They shared an apartment (platonically... no WAY she'd ever date him, he never did the dishes apparently) in the mid to late 80's (we'll get to some of those stories soon). My brother Greg was there also, in one of the rare times he wasn't hanging with his buddy Paulie at Lauderdale.
Some time during the evening Greg and Darren decided to head down to the Turtle Inn, a little dive bar on the shore a few houses away. Not really interested in counting the lack of teeth in the mouths of the regular clientele, Terri and I decided to head to MY favorite lake haunt, Frosty's in Whitewater, home of the greatest dairy treat ever created by man or god. Off they go... off we go. They walk of course. Terri drives.
On a side note, she almost killed us on the way back. Coming off the main road there is a hill with a sharp 90 degree left turn at the bottom. It was so steep that back in the day when we'd take post-dinner walks we had to push Grandpa up it or the walk would have ended after about two minutes. No street lights of course. She comes barrelling down the road in her usual aggressive driving manner. Too late to be able to affect what was about to happen I yell out to slow down. She flies over the top of the hill, yells out OH SHIT and slams on the brakes. We start sliding down the gravel strewn roadway, getting ever closer to the patch of trees and drop off at the end. She turns the wheel to the left at the bottom, and somehow we stop just inches from rolling into the ditch, down the hill and into someone's living room.
We laughed. Hard. Hey, we were young and didn't know better.
Anyway, I digress...
Terri and I hang out by the shore, probably trying to ignore the lingering tension between us from the couple year earlier tension where I once again was too shy and stupid to realize what was going on. Making a quick night (for reasons about to become obvious) Darren and Greg stagger back, Greg heads right to bed in the Don King Suite (so named because anyone who slept on the cot in there woke up with bed-head that made them look like Don King... granted, this didn't apply to Greg and I by this point in time) but not before he tells us that Darren was pounding Tequila shots and chasing them with Zima. You all remember Zima, right? That slightly cloudy swill water that was like alcoholic cream soda? (Wikipedia: In describing "The Long, Slow, Torturous Death of Zima", writer Brendan Koerner cited Zima's perceived reputation as a "girly-man" beverage and its persistent parodying by late-night TV host David Letterman. So totally appropriate for Darren... )
Terri and I want to go out for a late night cruise, so we pour Darren into The Trox and off we go. He is already pretty much passed out. After a few laps around and returning, we convince Darren to get up and leave the boat, trying to get him to go to bed in the boat house and sleep his mistake off. He gets about three steps and lays down on the end of the pier. Eh... that was good enough, so I leave him. Terri and I discuss the various possibilities of what could happen overnight and realize he could roll off into the water and we'd find him floating two piers down, so she sends me out to retrieve him. I try everything, but he doesn't even recognize that anyone is talking to him. I give up, thinking of what I'm going tell his mother, and head down the pier as Terri pushes past me.
Let me tell you, there aren't many people in the world who know how to make other people jump, but she is one of them, especially with Darren. Stepping out to the end she simply says "Darren! Stand up" and he groggily, but quickly obeys her command. The two head back down the pier, Terri wrapping Darren's arm around her shoulders. Well THAT was the second big mistake of the night. Terri is tough, but no match for a 140lb sack of liquor-induced jiggle topped with red hair; the two start wobbling with her barely hanging on. I leap out to grab them, but instead of letting me get on his side as I grab him with one arm, she grabs MY wrist for support, meaning I had no control of either of them. We start listing to the side in WAY too shallow of water for this to end up with anything less than cuts and bruises. "Terri, let go of my arm. Terri! Let go of my arm! TERRI LET GO OF MY ARM!!!" Just in time she does, I get between Darren and the water and wrap his other arm around me and I drag the three of us off the pier to safety.
Now as I mentioned, he was just a bag of ooze at this time, moving on pure unconscious action from Terri's command. Since he was off the pier, that command evaporated and he collapsed on the shore. Good enough. We both went to sleep, leaving him there.
Some time during the night I heard the siren call of the horking ape man, working in harmony with the bull frogs and cranes...
The patch of grass burnt out by the combination of stomach acid and tequila topped with a healthy dose of Zima took two years to grow back.
Unfortunately, I wasn't there to revel in the suffering Darren went through. (Come on... ZIMA?!?! He got what he deserved!) I was called in the middle of the night by my supervisor at work and I had to drive all the way down to the city. (Not the only time THAT happened... :( ) As a topper to the events, on the way home the next day Greg and Terri took Darren to Hernandez, a local Mexican restaurant, and drank tequila in front of him. Apparently he just laid his head on the table turning green.
So what did we learn kids? Repeat after me... "Tequila and Zima don't mix".
Darren playing with fire with Terri. How profound that was... Just past the table is where he left his mark this night.
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