"I'll Just Take A Shot"

I'm attempting to pull myself out of my sad, "woe is me", crying victim mood I've been in the last few weeks. I know my recent posts have been pretty over-dramatic and semi-boring, and I do apologize. I'm sure I've turned quite a number of people off of my blog,  just because of my attitude. Trust me, it's not intentional and I wish the last few weeks hadn't happened.

So in an effort to start fresh, I thought I'd describe a bizarre event from my weekend.

Ok?

Ok.

My friends and I don't do many big trips together. We don't get a shore house every summer, go on long weekends up the mountains, or plan week-long vacations to tropical islands. I don't know why--whenever we hang out, we always have a blast--but we just don't.

Now there is one thing we never miss. Even if any of us has things going on, we still make time for it. Schedule our lives around it. Put down payments on it 6 months in advance.

That would be Wildwood's Irish Weekend.

 

The last official weekend of summer (meaning the second to last weekend in September, when Fall officially begins. NOT Labor Day, as many believe), the Jersey Shore gets flooded with green, orange and white for 4 straight days of beer, vendor food, beer, make shift stands selling Irish gear, beer, Celtic dancing and music, beer, and debauchery.

Did I mention beer?

Wildwood closes down one whole street, right by it's 6 major bars in the area (Keenan's, Westy's, Flip Flops etc.) and allows merchants to set up a street fair. There's live music and bands playing on the street and in the official Irish Weekend Tent, you can buy a commemorative "Irish Weekend" cup and drink beer as you walk around (until 9 pm then the cops will smack your full cup of beer right out of your hand. No lie, I have seen it done) and buy as much Irish gear as your little hear desires. The bars have extended hours and Irish specials, including all the major Celtic bands from the Jersey Shore and Philly.

It's seriously the best.

My friends and I (there are 11 of us now, as most of my friends are in relationships or married) usually rent a condo right off the strip for the whole weekend. It was a perfect location as we could run back and forth to the house whenever we needed to (to use the bathroom or refill our cups) and we could individually leave the bars whenever we wanted and not be afraid of someone walking home alone. We always got the same condo, in the same building but for some reason, this year we could not. Seems someone bought our unit--assholes-- and we were homeless for Irish Weekend. Luckily, my friend was able to find us another place, equally as close, but it was almost a duplex--a house split into 4 different apartments. It wasn't as nice, but the price actually turned out to be better and it had a great view.

So by Friday night, all 11 of us were finally in Wildwood and Irish Weekend was in full swing. We started early and were done pretty late. That first night, I think we stayed out until almost 3am and only left when we were all starving. Luckily, our house was conveniently right across the street from a 24 hours McDonalds. Needless to say, we emptied the place and were not quiet when we finally stumbled into our house. We were pretty loud, I'll admit--something really funny happened while we were waiting in line at McDonalds and we were still laughing about it. But I don't think we were up for more than an hour--long enough for everyone to eat and blow up their air mattresses.

The next day came and went as usual. We got up semi-early, drank through our hangovers, went to the tent to see the Irish Dancers perform for an hour or two, came back to the house, took naps, then got ready for round 2.

At about 7:30, we were in full party mode. There were about 15 people in our house--random friends of friends who were drinking our beer and being kind of rude to us--and things were getting intense on the deck with beer pong. At one point, two of my guy friends had gathered up some of the cans to take outside to the trash. When they opened our door, they were greeted by our upstairs neighbor. Now from the kitchen, we could hear the majority of the conversation going back and forth between the three of them and we knew they were complaining.

"It's 7:30! What do they expect! It's Irish Weekend," one of my friends whispered as we all tried to listen to the conversation.

A few minutes later, my friend came back and told us what happened. Apparently our neighbors upstairs were a group of old women who were not too happy with how we came back "screaming at 3am the night before." And would rather take it up with us then get "...you know....them involved," meaning the cops. The woman asked if we could please keep it down tonight.

Naturally we took the threat pretty seriously and at that point kicked all the un-knowns out of our house. Then we discussed the whole situation as a whole.

There were 3 things we all agreed on:

1. We were not THAT loud the night before. Yes, we may have been obnoxious when we first came in but it lasted no longer than an hour. We were also in the house with the doors closed, and not on the deck.
2. It's Irish Weekend and we were staying a block from where everything was going down--sorry ladies, you signed up for this! If you wanted quiet and peace that weekend, you should have rented in the Crest. Sorry
3. Those ladies had no room to talk. "When we walked back in to the house this afternoon, I saw 3 of those ladies passed out on the stairs with pizza boxes all around them,"recalled my friend Jess.

All that aside, we agreed we'd try to be quieter when we came in that night.

At that point my friend Danielle walked into the hallway to go back to one of the bedrooms by the front door. As she walked by the front door she noticed it wasn't completely shut and was being nudged open. She opened the door, only to find the same woman (the confront-er from upstairs) standing there, tapping the door with her index finger.

"Hi! Um...can I help you?" Danielle asked.

"Yea. Hi! I wanted to come in and hang out with you guys. Is that okay," the "confront-er" said. Danielle really wasn't sure what to do so naturally she just let her in. So she came right in and introduced herself as Marilyn, our 65 year old neighbor from Brooklyn.

"So what we drinking," she asked looked at all of our shocked faces.

"Um....beer," I said, still a little stunned.

"No shots? I want to do a shot with you kids," she said, making her way over to our fridge and counter of snacks and liquor.

"All we have is tequila," my friend Lyndsay said.

"You don't have anything else," Marilyn said, pulling empty bottles from our stash and looking quite disappointed.

"Well we're just drinking beer today Marilyn. Very sorry we're not prepared," I said.

"Fine. I'll just do a shot of tequila then," she said, pulling the almost empty bottle out and handing it to me.

So we filled the shot glasses up, divvied up the limes and salt--also showed our elderly neighbor the proper way to do a tequila shot (lick the salt, drink the shot, suck the lime)--and tried not to laugh. She then proceeded to tell us her life story, and apologized for yelling at us earlier. She blamed the entire thing on her "un-cool roommates". Then she left--only after she realized she drank the last of our tequila.

I can't explain the fits of laughter that broke out among the 11 of us the minute the door slammed behind her. It was the most bizarre 15 minutes of our lives. Don't get me wrong, it was not because of her age. As a group, we hang out with and drink with our parents a lot. But the fact that she had come down, 20 minutes prior and yelled at us for coming in drunk and loud, then wanted to party with us? Come on now Marilyn!

We were all pretty sure that she, herself, was very wasted--she was slurring her words and her eyes were rolling a bit. So maybe she was just looking for a good time and her "friends" were all passed out drunk.

And yes, we snapped a picture for proof

 Definitely a memorable Irish Weekend.

Thanks for the laughs Marilyn!