JustMattHenry.com: gossip, life and humor

so this weekend, a large group of friends decided to go on a wine tour of some of the out-there wineries in virginia. and i agreed to go even though i knew i would only be running on three hours of sleep and really should have stayed home to finish all the work i had to do for school. so knowing that, that i had very little sleep and a ton of work to return to later in the afternoon, let me just say that i did have fun (except for the ride home, but we’ll get to that in a minutes), but i also know that my idea of fun may not be everyone else’s. i know i’m not normal. i know i don’t let go in the way that most of my friends do. i know i’m a control freak. i know that i enjoy, more than anything, seeing my friends have fun. i know that i have a ridiculous need to be the calm, cool, collected, in control, to be the responsible one, and that makes it hard for people to understand whether or not i’m having fun.

i also can’t bring myself to drink during the day. i make money off of people who drink at all times during the day, so it’s no moral high ground that i’m standing on. oh sure, i can have a beer with lunch or by the pool, but i’m not someone that can drink to excess in the daylight hours. been there, done that years ago. and it’s just not me now. i’m not into champagne brunches and stuff like that. mainly, if not only, because by five o’clock i will be home, tired, asleep and i will feel as if i wasted a beautiful day. i know that drinking with friends on a wine tour is not wasting a day, in fact, it can be quite fun and memorable and a great experience to have with your friends. again, no moral high ground. i find it perfectly acceptable.

so knowing all this…the little sleep, the pending homework, and the no drinking to excess during the day personality quirk, i find myself in a souped up limousine van/party wagon thing with neon lights and plush couches and…a stripper pole? at ten o’clock in the morning on saturday. the champagne is flowing, everyone’s laughing and listening to the big beats of popular dance and pop songs. and i’m staring out the window because i’m a scenery geek. i know to everyone else it must look like i’m being distant, ponderous, pissed off or what have you, but the truth is, i’m a scenery geek. i love a good scenic view and where better to find those than in the vast foothills of Virginia. i can’t help but stare out the window. even when mikey and i are traveling, i’m constantly looking out left and right, pointing things out (roadkill), quickly darting my eyes back to the twists and turns of the road ahead. and he pays little attention to what i have to say, or he looks up too late from his iphone to see the deer bounding along next to us or the beautiful house on a tree covered hill. but such is life. no biggie. so i know my quiet demeanor probably through some, who may have chalked it up to be working the night before and perhaps dozing off behind my aviators.

the wineries were lovely and i tasted some good wines and some lovely cheese spreads and stuff. we couldn’t ask for more beautiful weather. at one winery, i forget which one, mikey and i were strolling around the grounds and teasing some chickens and roosters–oh and a real turkey…like the kind you think of when you think thankgiving, with the fanned tail feathers and that fat round body–when some child came up to us and asked if we were going to eat that turkey for thanksgiving. we chatted with him for a bit as much we could. he may have been a little under developed for his age. i’m not sure. cause he randomly told us this: “my cousin can speak fish”

i have no idea what that meant, but i said, “well, that’s great!”

so the ride home. just know at this point in the afternoon i’m crashing and panicking about the work i need to do and the nap i want to take when i get home. and EVERYONE is wasted! people have been chugging all kinds of reds and whites and champagne and vodka and rum and i know from working where i work that when you mix all that shit, someone–SOMEONE–will throw up. and i was wearing a new sweater and i did not need someone yakkin’ it up on me. out of the 19 people in the limo (driver included), two of us were sober. the driver up front, and me in the back with my brain running crazy with some Final Destination bullshit, because with everyone climbing on everything and swinging on bars and chugging and doing shots and falling down, i just thought, huh, this doesn’t seem real safe, does it?  i mean, there was so much going on, all it took was for a spilled glass to leak on to one thing, someone slips doing a spin on the stripper pole, tossing their bottle of vodka towards the front of the limo, and then that causes a malfunction with the stereo and then there’s a fire which causes someone to fall down, the driver turns to see what in the sam hell is going on back there, which causes him to veer off in to the wrong lane and then he over corrects, we flip off the side of the road which startles a baby deer into running into oncoming traffic, cars skid out of the way to avoid him and then we have this:

this is how my mind works.

we arrive, surprisingly, safely home and i wander off to do school work while everyone continues the party at someone’s house and it is reported to me later that everyone thought i didn’t have fun or that i was pissed off (about what?). i can assure everyone i had fun (save that last hour). i’m just an oddball.