"Watching My Shirtless, Bloody Friend Hug His Grandma At 9 A.M. Was Pretty Awesome"

For many of you, the day after Thanksgiving requires you to put on your best Gap sport coat, head out to the local beef-and-beer drink your way through a high school reunion. Sometimes, the outcomes are disastrous. Heed these warnings.

So after a half semester spent at a big state school my freshman in a midst of weed and booze, I return home confident that I will enjoy my first Thanksgiving break. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the big night in my hometown for everyone to go downtown to the two local bars, talk about high school, get drunk, make awkward sexual advances, etc., so naturally my friends and I get after it like only a bunch of idiot 18 year olds can. Beer and liquor is drank in large, horrifying quantities, various drugs are consumed, and I mercifully black out and wind up in my bed at home the next day.

Fast forward to about 8am next day. I wake up feeling like Tom Hank's in the beginning of Saving Private Ryan - everything is moving in slow motion, my ears are ringing- and I roll over to see one of my friends strewn about on my bed like a beached wale. I sit up and look around, with a room of bloody bodies in front of me. One of my shirtless and blood-covered friends wakes up and informs me that we were all involved in a huge brawl with some guys, complete with police intervention and hospital visits, and I volunteered to have everyone sleep here. Knowing that it is Thanksgiving morning and we all certainly have families that are extremely pissed off right now, I wake my 17 year old sister who got her drivers license that very same week, and demand she drive all my friends home, while stopping at a deli for the necessary bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches that my slowly-dying body desperately needed.

Unfortunately for her, somebody found an unopened 30 of Natty Ice from the night before, and brought it into the back of the packed car. Naturally the 5 or 6 of us in the car go to town on them, gunning empty beer cans out the window at pedestrians, blasting music, and feeling a special type of Thanksgiving drunk. I have to admit, watching my shirtless, covered in dried blood, friend stumble to his front door at 9am and hug his Grandma as she opened it with a look of unadulterated horror on her face was pretty fucking awesome. On the way back home with a few of my friends who are generally soulless individuals, a cop starts to tail us about 5 blocks from my house just as one of my friends flawlessly pours a beer on my head in the front passenger seat. Panic ensues, and my virgin driver of a sister immediately loses her shit and starts sobbing at the wheel. With a chorus of "GO GO GO!" driving her, we speed the remaining distance, swing it into the driveway, and sprint into my backyard, holding the half empty 30.

To me and my friends, this immediately becomes a chance for celebration. Sadly my sister, who handled this whole incident with the fortitude of 1940's Poland, ran inside and got my mom outside, who saw the now-shirtless me and the other blood-soaked idiots drunk in the backyard Thanksgiving morning. I pickup the 30 and hop the fence, running around the block to my Dad's house, where he was entertaining a family from France for the holiday. Walking in shirtless, tired, drunk, fat, and having to take a horrific dump, I say "Merci" (yeah I know, I know...whatever) and go upstairs to pass out in my 6 year old stepbrothers' bunk beds. Thanksgiving complete. — Joe