post

Strange New Year (Part One)

Strange New Year

Part One

 

I was nineteen years old on this New Year’s Eve and it was the second year in a row that my friends and I had been thrown out of a party before midnight. There were a lot of missed midnight celebrations ahead for me. Those were my decisions.

After my shows would end on New Year’s Eve, I would hurry to get home and lock myself inside before the asylums opened and the lunatic’s escaped. The safest time to be on the road that night is at 12 O’clock.

There was a heavy snow this particular New Year’s Eve and we were forced to head out on foot. We had been invited to a few parties and would have to pick the one within walking distance. A good friend of mine had invited me to a party at her house. She said I could bring all of my friends except one.

“No G!”

Now, how do you tell a friend they’re not invited to a party? Especially, when he’s in the group walking to the door with you. I figured we would hide him in the back and maybe she wouldn’t notice. She was smiling brightly when she opened the door and then she saw him standing there.

“You brought him?”

My hope she wouldn’t notice gone, I assured her,

“He’ll be fine.”

Words I would later regret.

If you had walked in off the street, you would have noticed a group that just didn’t seem to fit in. Everyone else was a church group in their bright holiday sweaters. They actually had a gleam about them.

Over in the corner was a group of unshaven misfits wearing flannel with cut off sleeves over a sweatshirt…Because it’s New Year’s Eve and you want to look your best.

If music was playing, it would’ve been angelic for most of the room and the theme from the Omen playing around us.

The church group parents were having a party upstairs. It was getting close to midnight when I noticed the two groups were now together in the downstairs. Not only that, but my friends grandmother was now seated next to G.

He had been talking about the New Year’s joint, but none of us had seen it yet. It could have just been a myth like Bigfoot. That was when somebody asked,

“Is everybody ready for midnight?”

G smiled and said I am, then he reached into his jacket pocket and unrolled a baggy that contained a foot long joint that he later told us took him two hours to roll.

Grandma was less than delighted as she stared at what was in the baggy. That’s when my friend that invited me turned toward me and said,

“Get Out!”

I really couldn’t make a case for why we should stay. So we grabbed our coats and headed out into the snow. Since I had been thrown out of a party the year before around the same time, I just considered it a holiday tradition.

That was just the beginning of this night. The weird parts still lied ahead. Come back tomorrow for part 2.

Speak Your Mind

*