Late Night Nostalgia: Hiding booze in high school
New series I almost certainly won’t follow up on: Late Night Nostalgia.
This is for those times when you’re lying in bed late at night, reflecting fondly on the simpler days of old. Days when your biggest concern was “will any chicks come to the party?” and the answer was always no.
Not like now where your biggest concern is why the IRS keeps sending you letters and why you keep throwing them away like they’re junk mail. They’re just going to keep sending them — it’s the IRS…they aren’t just gonna like forget. But whatever you’re busy today, just toss it and deal with it next month.
But you know what I’m talking about, right? When you’re alone and just silently reminiscing on those high school days where you and your pals just had aimless, stupid fun and everything seemed so wide open and possible and not soul crushing and suffocating and oh God what happened to my baby face why can’t I see my toes past my stomach why haven’t I done anything about the empty carton of Ben & Jerry’s under my bed it’s been like 3 months do I care that little about basic sanitation what the fuck have I become AHHHHH AHHHHH FUCKKKKKKK!
You know, one of those nights.
Anyways, I was doing some existential dread and panic reflection and remembered one of my favorite high school activities: hiding booze from my parents before a party.
Drinking used to be such a rush back in the day. It was illegal, your parents or the cops were always trying to bust you, and it became like a sport to sneak away a bottle or two from your parents’ stash and be the hero at the party.
My tactics for stealing the booze were simple yet brilliant. For my adult readers, this will be a fun trip down memory lane. And for high schoolers who read this blog, it will be a helpful instructional guide, but tbh your future is pretty bleak if this is what you read in your spare time. Learn what cotangents are or something idk.
Actually don’t, word of advice — calculus is useless. You will never need it. The only profession that requires you to know calculus is calculus teacher and even then you really just need to be one lesson ahead of the kids on Khan Academy.
Anyways, my meandering rant aside, here are my three basic steps for sneaking booze past your parents in high school:
1. Take what won’t be missed
Before you do anything else, you need to procure the booze. Now if your parents have a booze cabinet, shelf, drawer, whatever, odds are there’s some crap in there that has been gathering dust since their weird second cousin gifted it to them on their wedding day. This is your target.
Also, use your brain. If your dad has a favorite scotch or mom is always drinking white wine, avoid these things at all costs. Remember, they were young once too, they know all your tricks. Don’t try to replace their bourbon with Arnold Palmer — how any of us thought that made sense is beyond me. Instead, just go for the booze that won’t be missed. In my case, it was a bottle of Amaretto. A truly terrible thing to drink on its own but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.
2. The water bottle is your friend
Even if your parents don’t drink a certain type of booze, its presence in the cabinet is noteworthy. You can’t go around removing entire bottles and expect them not to notice an entire change of scenery. What you want to do is take the bottle, put it in a backpack or something that you would normally carry around the house. Then you’re going to take a couple empty water bottles, go to a safe and private location in the house, pour your share of booze into the bottles, then replace the bottle exactly where you found it when the coast is clear.
3. Surviving the inspection
Now unless you had those cool parents who just don’t give a shit about you, odds are some questions will be asked about what you’re up to that evening. My biggest piece of advice here: be honest.
Tell your parents that you’re going to your friend’s for a little get together. Concede that there will be drinking, but you’re going to sleep there so they don’t have to worry about you drinking and driving. Also mention that while booze may be present, you aren’t bringing any.
Now of course the last part is a lie. But by telling your parents the truth, you establish trust and potentially avoid a search altogether. However, in the event that they do decide to search your bag for booze, you need to be ready. Here are the basic approaches you can take to sneaking booze past the search.
Waistband the bottle
I still sneak booze into BC games/Fenway/Baptisms this way. Fill the bottle almost to the top, but leave enough air that you can compress the bottle so it’s flat. Then simply put it in your waistband and try not to bump into anything. Even the most strict of parents won’t frisk you.
The Trojan Bottle
As a student of history, I was particularly proud of this little maneuver. Basically you place a decoy bottle in your bag where it’s not particularly hard to find. Your mom opens up your bag, finds the bottle, and confiscates it thinking she’s won. Had she done any digging however, she may have found the smaller bottle folded nicely inside your tee shirt at the bottom of the bag. This is all about lulling your parents into a false sense of security.
Get defensive
This play is tough because it essentially requires you to gaslight your mom. Having said that, it’s extremely effective if done properly. When your mom or dad asks if you have any booze, you need to immediately just guilt trip the hell out of them. Talk about how they don’t trust you, how you show them nothing but respect and this is how they repay you. Really make a show of it. I used to open every door to my car and swipe under the seats to prove there’s no booze in there. You have to act believably offended that they aren’t taking you at your word even though they are VERY correct in their suspicions. 9 times out of 10, they’ll relent, apologize, and send you and your bag full of loose beers on your merry way. Moral? No. Effective? Very.
That will do it for the first/probably last iteration of Late Night Nostalgia. God I miss weighing under 200 lbs.
