The Oregon: Year One - The Tale of Biff Begins

The following takes place in late March of 2001, just a little bit before I moved into the legendary U.S.S. Oregon NCC-117. I’d come over on the weekends to hang out with my friends. Adam and I worked in the same factory so we had similar schedules making it easier to coordinate weekend Donkey Kongings of which he was much annoyed. Truth was my brothers, Nick and Jeff, and myself played so much Super Smash Brothers that there was few characters on the game that I didn’t like or wasn’t good at playing. This infuriated my opponents because it pretty much ruined any kind of fun for them because I was almost guaranteed a win. Adam and I have most of the same interests and are, if you all didn’t already know, two of the biggest dorks around. We just hide it better then others, mostly behind sarcasm and wit. If there’s an A-Team, Knight Rider, Star Trek (any kind) marathon going on you’ll find us sitting there together quizzing each other on our knowledge fully confident that said knowledge will someday make us gods amongst men. Well I didn’t drink back in this time and I was completely against it. I would go over and hang with my drunken buddies because they sometimes needed a driver and I could laugh at their dumb asses while they acted the fool. I use to make money out of the deal too. I would stop at every gas station and pretend to fill up the tank. Then I would make them split the bill. Heheh. Good times. Nowadays when they ask why I would do that to them all I can say is, pirate. Sometimes for the guys I didn’t care as much for I would drop them off at the wrong house and speed off. Man we had some good times. See I don’t need alcohol to have fun. Well I guess I did to get them drunk. Anyway, I was dating a woman named Barbara and she meant a whole hell of a lot to me. She wasn’t the type of girl I usually was known to go after. She was ghetto Canton style which isn’t really that ghetto but it’s a lot more then me and my friends were used to. I had worked my way up in the ranks by being truly being concerned by the problems she was having. I really wanted to make her happy. I did for about two years we were happy and I thought that she would be the woman I was going to marry. Well since my wife’s name is Stacie it’s obvious where this story’s headed. I was pretty upset because I was the one who ended the relationship with a cunning my way or the highway tactic. Well she chose the highway which wasn’t supposed to be a viable option. Such is life right. Well I was inconsolable. I couldn’t find the joy in anything and I had for a short time lost the ability to find the funny in life.

My friends were hard pressed to cheer me up and in a last ditch effort offered me that which I had denied myself for so long. A drink made of barley and hops, a drink, called beer. I was unimpressed with the taste but managed to swig it down. It enveloped me in a tractor beam of warmth and calmness. I had another just to see if I had truly felt the touch of God as I had assumed I had. Adam was surprised at how open I had become to the whole drinking idea. I was on the third beer when Dan came home and we ventured off for more. Now the Liquor Hut we normally patron because they don’t judge us was closed and we had to go to Giant Eagle where I found every beer’s name hilarious. I’m not quite sober and it gets like a packed Ohio/Michigan game in Columbus when I get the sauce into me, loud and wild. Here Dan is trying to usher Adam and I through the line before they call the cops. Even though I think Louisville was settled by the French I think they were an offshoot of the Puritans. Anyway we got back and started to go shot for shot whilst watching TV.

After a bit of time goes by I put in Adam’s Beastie Boys DVD. However, the buttons on the once cooperative remote control are now moving every time I try to hit the play button. After I get Dan to give me a hand I start to jam out. Adam and Dan were hanging out watching my drunk ass dance and sing like the trained monkey I was acting like when Sabotage finally came on. It was the turning point in my evening where bad was careening uncontrollably to worse. I screamed at the two baffled drunks with me to “Play it twice at the same time” whatever that meant. That’s when I felt the urge that everything I’ve thrown down my gullet was coming back up for an encore performance. I quickly grabbed the bucket thinking briefly how I’d impress them all with my ability to take care of myself while three sheets to the wind. In my haste and self-congratulating I held the bucket up like Link does in the Zelda games when he finds a magic item to show them my intent. The Zelda music was more then likely playing in my head at this time. Unfortunately at that same moment my stomach surged and I let loose. Well I did hit the bucket but it was still in the air over my damn head. I was dragged by Brad and Glen out to Brad’s car and went home to my dad’s house. Now Glen will feature in upcoming stories but it’s mostly between his girlfriend and I. We fought a lot! At any rate once I made it back to Dads I went straight to the bathroom and proceeded to throw up all over that place too much to my dad’s chagrin. It would not have been my choosing for the end of the night and I’m sure that it wasn’t the way Dad wanted it to end either.

The next day, as we sat in the corner booth and living room respectively, piecing together what happened, not one of us knew that this would become a Monday morning ritual for the rest of the year. We were actually surprised how much fun we had minus the vomiting. Cleaning the house would become a major bonding experience in the Oregon bringing closer and causing friction between the main characters depending on the circumstances. I had missed the Adam/DW battle royale and I missed most of my first meeting with Glen but I would come to know him more as the weeks moved on. I would get to know his girlfriend really well because we fought all of the time. That was the first time I got really smashed and it was the first of many Oregon parties, which would become the place to party in just a few weeks. It was the beginning of the Biff. Still unnamed and abstract Biff would in short time make his mark in Louisville history as a defeater of windows and a warrior on the front lines of a self imposed war on drugs.
I’ll see you all later on down the road.
Mike

To hear about pony rides and why Adam and DW were locked in a battle royale in the first place check out the good Doctor's blog: http://drrobinson.blogspot.com/2006/11/oregon-year-one-tale-of-biffing.html