alcohol screaming

I remember it like it was yesterday. No blacked-out pieces, no waking up in strange places, no cautious uncertainty....I remember just about every detail. After all: most of them went into the police report. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

July 1997. Sweltering heat of Maryland. Plenty of booze laid in from the Class Six. Jello shooters mixed and frigidated the night before. Good friends re-uniting from several bases on the eastern seaboard at my house. Promises of good food (always, i can't let them down), good music (as dh could never let them down either), good drinks and good laughs, plus the added comedy of three dogs and a baby. Bring on the birthday party already.

We invited neighbors, thereby notifying them that we'd be rowdy for a while. But strangely none of them showed up. We cleaned the house like mad, opening windows, re-arranging furniture for the maximum party atmosphere, and cleared out all the land mines in the back yard. Music cranked, bodies arriving, food being eaten...all signs of a rockin' party. Still no neighbors, even though they said they'd come. Strange bunch of co-street-habitants we live amongst. *shrug* Oh well. Their loss.

Nigh about 10:30, I toddled across the street to ask the friendly beings there if they'd like to join us for my champagne toast. I don't know why. It just seemed like the thing to do at the time. I walked in (their front door was open) to a full-blown screaming match between Navy member wife and paraplegic husband. Drunk and giggling, I still decided to ask them if they wanted to come over. Wife responded with a resounding, "Yes. Anything to get away from him!" Back across the street I shuffled, crystal champagne flute in hand, concentrating on making it ring around the edge as I walked. The shouting match followed behind me. And then I heard the screams.

I lurched around (in my own yard by now) to see husband in his wheelchair with a death-grip on wife's hair trying to twist her head off. Literally. In the middle of the street. Her voice was becoming more strangled-sounding when I burst into my home, snatched up the phone and dialed 911. Other neighbors came out of other homes, separated husband from wife on opposite sides of the street and locked his wheels while we waited on the phone for the 60-120 seconds it took for the base police to arrive.

Navy wife was taken into custody "to cool down" (WHAT?!? The victim gets in trouble? Oh, no, it's the military member who gets in trouble, i see.....not) and husband is sent back into the house, under surveillance for a while. Or something. And then the head police dude comes into my house to take the official report from the person who called. Yup. Drunk Katerooni.

He took a long sweeping gaze at the detritus of a former good time strewn from one end of the room to the other. Don't get me wrong. It didn't look like a crack-house, but every horizontal surface was covered with bottles, glasses, and flutes of varying fullness alongside empty jello shooter cups and paper plates of birthday cake and hors d'oerves.

I wiggled my fingers in response to his stare and giggled, "I'm 21 today. I'd offer you a drink, but I know ya just can't stay. Too bad for you, huh?" He chuckled and smiled and began his report.

"Awe you da miwitawy membow?" he Elmer Fudd-ed. oh. my. god. It was all I could do to not laugh in his face. It didn't seem like a good idea. The room was deathly quiet, and I imagined I could hear the sounds of twenty people biting their tongues until they bled. It was the longest drunk twenty minutes of my life and although I couldn't stop smiling, I never managed to laugh outright at the officer's serious lisp. We all waited a full minute after the car door slammed and had driven away before breaking into thunderous peals of laughter.

And the lesson I learned that night? Not "Don't beat your spouse." I already knew that. Not "Don't invite the neighbors." I'm glad I had intervened and was able to call for help when I did. It was simply "Don't drink so much that you can't fill out a police report with a semi-straight face." And the Kater was careful in her drinking habits ever more.

The End.