Friday, March 6, 2009

Broken Part 15 (Keg Guy To The Rescue. I swear the stories will end in two or three installments.)

About a year after the wreck, I ended up at a keg party in Davidson. This was unusual for two reasons. One: No one ever had keg parties in Davidson. And two: If they did, I sure as hell didn't want to be there with those pricks. And they didn't want me there, either. However, this one was being held at the house of my only female friend from Davidson: "Jacyln."

Me and Jacyln had also known each other since preschool, but both went to different high schools at that time. She went to some private school and I went to Mooresville. Neither one of us went to North Meck like we were supposed to. Man, so many people avoided that schoool like the plague. Jacyln was just like the girl that broke my back -except she was the exact opposite. Huh? They were the same age and they were both from Davidson and they were both intelligent and they were both professors daughters. However, Jacyln didn't act entitled, Jaclyn was sweet, Jaclyn had a great sense of humor, and Jaclyn's parents were hilarious. Her mom was a personality on the Classical music station at the college, and her dad was a French professor who looked like James Taylor. They both loved drinking wine and the dad wasn't above playing a round of "Asshole" with drunken teenagers. They were the first family I ever knew that didn't go to church. (In Davidson, I would dare speculate that most people don't believe in God, but they still think it would be downright unsociable not to go to Sunday services at the DCPC (Davidson College Presbyterian Church) and scoff at all the stuff the preacher says. I think a lot of them looked down on my family because we went to a Baptist church out in the country and actually believed in the God that the preacher spoke of. How crazy were we?) Jacyln's family confused me, because I always heard that if you didn't go to church you were bad people. But they were great people.

So when me and whoever I was with showed up at Jacyln's keg party, we ended up on the back porch waiting for the keg guy to pour our beer for us. Have you ever given much thought to the general character known as "The Keg Guy?"

The Keg Guy is the person who may or may not be throwing the party, but he insists on being the guy sitting at the keg nicely pouring beers into the cups of everyone that approaches the tap. Keg Guys are guys who later run for mayor. Just like guys who run for mayor, keg guys can be in for good or bad reasons. Some guys take the position as keg guy so they can talk to every single girl at the party. They often also do this, so they can talk to every guy at the party. They want to meet the girls for the obvious reasons. They want to meet the men so they can know a few things: So they can know who they want to fight, or maybe so they know who they will later have to stop from starting a fight. Also they get to know which guys have girlfriends, and which guys will be competition, and which guys can be allies in the "War For Pussy!" The reasons for being the Keg Guy are obvious, but most people think it's just a nice guy pouring beers, which it often is - but sometimes it isn't.

In this case it was. I could tell that this guy running the keg was a cool motherfucker. He was a little older than me, maybe 19, and I could tell he was country, probably from Huntersville. I felt like I knew him, but I knew I had never seen him in my life. I must have just known his kind.

So the Keg Guy poured my friends beer and then he got to me. We immediately started chatting me up. He was my kind of redneck. He was funny and friendly and just wanted to have fun, raise hell and see nobody get hurt - although he did reserve the right to hurt someone who deserved it. I could see all this. We were laughing and shooting the shit and having so much. That I even stayed by the keg and kept talking to this guy even after my beer was poured. I just moved to the side and kept chatting with him while he filled up everyone else.

About a minute or two into our conversation, the guy said, "Man, I swear, I feel like I know you! But I know I don't know you!"

I said that I felt the same way, and we felt awkwardly too affectionate for a minute and then went back to just talking about stupid shit, then he interrupted whatever we were talking about.

"Wait! Man, you're gonna think I'm crazy if I'm wrong. But I gotta ask: Were you in a real bad car wreck about a year ago?"

Me: "Yep."

Him: "Over in Huntersville by the school, right?"

Me: "That was me."

Him: "No, shit? I always wondered what happened to you. I can't believe you look as good as you do. Shit, I can't believe you're walking! The name's Eddie Hagar. I pulled your ass out of a ditch one time. Nice to finally meet'cha!"

Me: "Well, this all sounds about right. The name's Roth Wriscey. First off: Thank you. Now fill me in. This all happened during my black out period after the wreck."

Him: "Well, I was driving down that hill and came up on these four people in a wreck. They was four of yall, right? So I pulled over and got out, and you had, somehow, passed out in a ditch. Your friends didn't know what they were doing, and were letting you lay and roll around in some awful positions in that ditch even though they said you were screaming about how bad your back hurt. I've had some medical training, so I knew that I had to get you out of that ditch, and stabilized, so I laid you in the road and kept you down until the paramedics came. Man, I always wondered who you were. What the fuck? I can't believe you're at a keg party being all normal."

Me: Thank you. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I never saw Eddie again. But he was one hell of a keg guy, and from what he tells me, one hell of an amateur emergency worker.

4 comments:

  1. That's really bizarre! Around here, all the keg parties I ever went to were serve yourself!

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  2. How cool was that! I will be sad to see this story finished.

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  3. I know... our's were all serve yourself too! What's up with that? Do all the keg parties around there have a "keg guy"?

    Tiff

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  4. There's no official keg guy. I just noticed that oftentimes a guy will comandeer the tap.

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