Welcome to Chicago, Here is Your Free Vomit

On Friday I flew into Chicago for my conference. One of my friends from high school and I made plans to go to the White Sox vs. Indians game. (the third and fifth place teams in the American League Central division…. Baseball at it’s most exciting!) When he and I travel together we try to take in whatever baseball game we can, it is kind of a tradition. (Then immediately after the game I try to convince him that we need to go see strippers.)

The weather was perfect and it was La Raza night at Comiskey aka US Cellular Field that meant a whole lot of Richie Valens, Shakira, and Cypress Hill between innings. (Apparently they are the only three Hispanic recording acts ever.) We took our seats down the third base line and grabbed a couple of beers. A few minutes later two 20-year-old guys sat behind us, they had been tailgating and obviously had a lot to drink. One of them tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I would get them a beer. Let me rephrase that, it was the first time out of 150 times before they actually got a beer that they asked me.

I’ve been in that spot. I’ve been the twenty year old wanting to continue to drink.  They said that they were with their older brother and his friend (they had different seats, also they told me they weren’t driving). I get it, I understand it, and well… let’s just say two beers magically appeared at their seats a few innings into the game.

About half an inning later I hear this conversation behind us.

Drunk Dude 1: What is that?
Drunk Dude 2: Dip, haven’t you done it?
Drunk Dude 1: No, but give me some.

Now I am not a big tobacco products guy but I do know that doing dip for the first time in general usually has a high percentage of it not going over well. Doing it while drunk turns the 50/50 percentage into more of a 95/5 type of deal. Within a couple of minutes I heard a familiar noise from years of drunken college debauchery.

RRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLFFFFFFFFFFF

I nice little splash of vomit hit the back of my legs. I turned to see drunk dude 1 throwing up into his beer and all over the back of my legs. Of course I turned to see round 2 coming at me.

The whole section started laughing. One girl asked if the kid was on Facebook after she took his picture because if he wasn’t he was now. A few people gave me some napkins so I could mop up the puke and my dignity. Drunk Dude 1 headed to the bathroom so he could clean the puke off of his body to the applause of our section. He came back later and slumped in his chair, waiting for the game to be over. Of course he wasn’t finished and about another inning later

My friend and I decided to move a row or two down. He turned to me and said, “Welcome to Chicago.”

Welcome indeed.