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Sunday, July 13, 2008
Why my husband’s IQ plummets
Husband behave badly around his college friends? Ever found surprising charges on your credit card bill?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I started to worry as soon as the wedding invitation arrived.
One of my husband’s good friends from college was getting married. I knew Michael would want to go. “I’ve already missed more than half of his weddings,” he said.
Very quickly, the wedding turned into a road trip, with Michael and another college friend headed South with no kids, no wives and fewer inhibitions then they normally would have.
They were thrilled by the prospect. I, however, saw “Tom and Jerry” red flags, alarm bells, and flare guns shooting off in my head.
Individually, these are all great guys. They have respectable jobs and work hard to support their families. They’re good fathers and, under any other circumstances, completely trustworthy. But somehow when they get together they revert to 19-year-old idiots.
Their IQs spiral downward, and their common sense goes out the window. This is the crew that Michael generally goes to Georgia-Florida games with, and all of their exploits seem to involve alcohol, loud music, stupid dares and every now and then strippers.
Let me illustrate.
Picture it: Athens, 1992. I had just started dating my now husband when I received a phone call at 1 a.m. Could I possibly get out of bed and come pick up my new drunk boyfriend and all of his drunk friends from the Ice-T concert? One of their friends, who happened to be the driver that night, had been kicked out of the show for fighting, and they couldn’t find him.
I wanted to be a good new girlfriend so I went. However, they weren’t where they said they would be. After circling the block many times, I finally found them — wrestling in the street. Apparently they had some sort of gentlemanly disagreement, which ended with this weekend’s groom body-slamming my now husband onto the hood of my Buick.
Flash forward to our wedding about two years later. Michael’s bachelor party was two nights before our wedding, which I thought was wise. I knew they would drink. I knew they would go to strip clubs. Fine. Whatever.
However, I needed him dressed and coherent by 5 p.m the next day for our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Besides being stressed out about the wedding, I was meeting much of Michael’s family for the first time that night.
I started calling him around noon. He wasn’t at home. At that time cell phones weren’t ubiquitous. I waited a little bit and then started calling his friends. I finally located him in Marietta with no vehicle and no sober, alert groomsmen to drive him home. So I drove from Lilburn to pick him up. One of his friends — not in the wedding party — finally agreed to meet me part way. (Why didn’t he drive him all the way?) Let’s just say I wasn’t happy and that’s not a great way to start a marriage.
About five years later, several of the boys planned a night out at an Atlanta Falcons exhibition game. Somehow, on the way home from the Georgia Dome they ended up at the Cheetah.
“They were giving away free passes outside the dome,” one of the idiots later said. Well, I’m not sure exactly what happened that night, but it didn’t turn out to be free. Someone had the brilliant idea to rent the VIP room and things went downhill from there. Phone lines lit up as credit card bills arrived a month later. All the charges were stealthily disguised as the “International Grill.” My husband refers to it as the “Night of $1,800.”
So you can see why I’m not thrilled that my husband is headed to a beach with these fellas.
I don’t think anyone is going to do anything illegal but there’s lots of trouble that grown men should not be getting into that is legal. There’s definitely a time and a place to cut loose, but they need to remember they’re not 19.
Since the original inception, the plan has escalated and added an extra night before the wedding. I’m sure they’re thinking bachelor party, which is never a good sign. They claim they’re just going to a party at the groom’s mom’s house. I guess I’ll know for certain when the credit card bill arrives.
