but even for noon games, I typically don’t start drinking until 10, so I only get like an hour of drinking, and it is more of a chore like “this is what I’m supposed to be doing” than anything else.

The one plus of noon games is the tailgating afterwards is fun.

The first part, not missed a game on account of drunkenness. It was in Adelaide, South Australia, on a junior semester abroad. Crazy aussies scheduled a freakin party to celebrate the last day you could withdraw from classes without penalty, called it Prosh Day for some reason.

Now there were four ‘residential Colleges’ around this park in North Adelaide, and residents there can be students at any of the local Universities in the city. The colleges are where you eat, sleep, root, socialize and allegedly study. But somehow Prosh Day was recognized by all the Unis as the same day. So all the Colleges, who were fairly bitter rivals in matters of intramural sport and drinking (each had its own local pub and we all played against each other in a bunch of sports—side note: most aussies sucked so bad at basketball that my pickup YMCA experience made me a star point guard!), agreed to celebrate this wonderful day with a party in the park. At 6 o’clock on Sunday morning! Needless to say, I was ecstatic about this prospect. I actually went to bed early on Sat night to rest up (not sure how). Woke up at 5:30a and immediately started bumping my favorite Ice-T cassette.

Six in the morning po leece at my door
Fresh Adidas squeak across the bathroom floor
Out my back window, I make my escape
Didn’t even have time to grab an old-school tape

So I’m dressed and out in the park on a cool morning, when I spot our college President (think Student Council), Dicky Sin unpacking some crates. Dicky and I hadn’t gotten to know each other too well yet at that point. He was the senior President, and I was the goofy yank, but I had befriended his girlfriend who helped score me a coveted invite to his upcoming 21st, so we were on a collision course. I offered to help and discovered he was a man of great preparatory skills, as we unloaded 6 cases of champagne and about 30 oven-roasted cornish hens. Feast!

Now, as more of our fellow St. Ann’s members trickle out and wash the sleepy dirt out of their eyes, we start to get our party on. The lads and lasses from Lincoln turned out in a small group, Aquinas was nowhere to be seen and the best opposing turnout was manned by the wankers and wankettes at St. Mark’s. They had a group of about 25 (we had about 40) and set up camp not too far from us in the park. But about 3 hours into it, we could see their pile of piss (aussie slang for booze, remember) dwindling. More of their crowd dissipated in time with their stash and by about 10a there were only 6 or so of them over there and all their bottles were empty. Meantime, we were going strong (and drunk) and had two cases left. We were having a ball, being festive and somehow beginning to experiment with gymnastics, when we noticed this huge cow of a St.Marks woman trying unsuccessfully to ‘sneak’ into one of our cases.

I immediately accosted her and shouted in my most obnoxious yankee accent: ‘are you trying to steal our piss?’ Our troops assembled, as did theirs, and she slurred back at me something to the effect of we had so much, they were out and needed more. Not so much as one request or please in there. So we turned her down and Dicky informed her to speak with her prez who should’ve been more prepared. She was slammed and undeterred and continued to stumble around trying to reach into our cases. Dicky closed them and sat on them and I proceeded to try to box her out. She was every bit my size, if not bigger, and seemed buoyed by these obstructions, so she picked up the intensity of her attack and the next thing you know we were full-on wrestling! Despite her size, her tolerance was nowhere near my league and she was no match for the wrestling skills honed to perfection during my wildly successful 0-12 HS senior year. I swiftly took her down and we all howled in laughter as she fumbled around on the ground giggling and trying unsuccessfully to get at our stash. At this point most of us were double-fisting with full champagne bottles, pounding piss like it was water and generally taunting the St. Marks leftovers who had none.

When they finally sulked off and we had finished off the last bottle, we packed up and headed inside. When I crawled into bed to pass out, I noted it was 11:36am.