P-A-R-T-Y'd I do that ?

P-A-R-T-Y’d I Do That?
Slap! Erik’s face made an unfriendly contact with the pavement of our driveway. All in a summer’s night that was supposed to host the party of the year at our house while our parents were away. We have all either done it or thought of doing it [throwing a party while the parental unit leaves tow], but where are the thoughts of the possibilities that things won’t go as smooth as planned? House parties are never a guaranteed success. When my brother Erik and my party went terribly wrong, the only guarantee of that night was that I would never attempt one again.
I had the whole night planned out. I would wave my parents goodbye as they exited our driveway and turned the corner, not expected to return from Monterey until after Labor Day. I allowed an hour for them return for anything they might have forgotten. When the hour passed, I was in the clear and the dialing began. I called and texted my list of friends alerting them of my vacant house and invited them to join Erik and myself in a booze fest. At the same time, Erik shadowed my actions with his list of friends. Since I was the only one of age, I elected myself the beer maid. I ran to the store to buy starter supplies [chips, drinks, ice, etc.] and alcohol. It wasn’t long until the knocking started and the party began.
Everything was going according to plan. Our house was wall to wall with drunk, smiling faces. The music fit everyone’s taste. New bottles were filling our counter tops as empty bottles were filling our trash cans. There were no signs of police. Our festivities were a success, right? One might assume we were in the clear. That’s when things usually take a turn for the worst. Which is exactly what happened.
I am not sure how the famous fight was started. I caught the middle and most important part of it. See, my highly intoxicated brother was graced with the genius idea to play drums in the house at 2 a.m. on a Thursday morning [we had no specific time to wake up the next morning, but our neighbors work]. I chased after him to confiscate the drumsticks. As I approached his room, screams filled our living room. I turned around in time to catch a glimpse of a herd of boozies stampede through our house to our front yard. It was like a scene in a cartoon where all you see is a dust ball and an occasional fist pop out. It seems that punks and skaters don’t always mix as well as gin and tonic. It was a nightmare.
I ran outside. Not to join the excitement but to try and stop it. There was too much adrenaline and testosterone for one little girl to take on by herself. I kept trying anyway. I got to one of the guys yelling for him to get in his car and leave. He was so pumped he wouldn’t stop moving. He kept swinging and in the mist of his craziness, his fist punched my face. At the same time his fist was redirecting my face to the left, I felt my body lift. Erik saw him and grabbed me to take me into the house. Erik, enraged by the idiot’s actions, was determined to even the score. I begged him not to go outside. I tried holding onto him as tight as I could. I looked over to my right and saw our friend’s bloody face appear in our bathroom doorway. He too was being restrained from heading back outside. Astonished by the amount of blood oozing out of his head, I lost grip of Erik and he took off like a bat out of hell towards our front door. He sprinted off the porch toward the crowd. As he leaped off the last step of the porch he became absent minded of the rocks boarding our planters. His foot got caught on a rock. Slap! The combination of the speed he was going along with the pull of the rock caused him to trip forward and slam the front of his body onto the driveway.
I let out a dramatic, Oscar winning performance of a scream in fear that he broke his face. A mutual friend saw his fall and quickly ran over to assist him. Our friend is a pretty husky guy especially compared to my little 140lbed brother. So our friend was able to pick him up like an infant and cradle him back into the house. By this time our neighbors became aware of the fighting and came to help get everybody broken up, sorted out, and sent on their way. Erik complained of an excruciating pain in his arm. We believed it to be broken. We did a quick sweep of the house to get some things cleaned up and set off to the emergency room.
There was a good size crew with us. We got Erik checked in. He was rushed to get x-rays of his arm. When he arrived back into the room we were allowed to go back and see him. We waited for the results. The doctor approached us with a disappointed look on his face. He informed us that the arm was not broken, Erik was just a drunken moron with a contusion. We were lucky. The doctor put Erik’s arm in a half of a cast and sent all us home and out of their hair. We were all still pretty intoxicated and hungry. We got Erik (who was clothed in a stunning hospital gown) into a car and we caravanned to Denny’s to consume a sobering meal.
While at Denny’s everyone was going over the different versions we all had of the night as we swallowed our breakfast. In the middle of our tales and giggles, my phone rang. My dad was on the other line. “Danielle?” he asked. “Hey Dad, what’s going on at 5:30 a.m.? There isn’t a time difference in Monterey is there?” “No, but what’s going on with you guys?” “Why?” I asked as my heart started racing and my body started trembling. “Well, there weren’t any rooms available because of the holiday, so we decided to come home. The living room with filled with beer bottles, there’s blood on our walls, and no one is home.” “Oh that? Well, we kind of had some people over and there was a fight. Erik hurt his arm so we went to the emergency room. He is fine. We are at Denny’s getting something to eat.” “Oh, okay. I think we have some stuff to talk about when you guys get home, huh?” “Ya, I think so”, I replied. I hung up and didn’t need to explain what just happened since everyone heard me. Our friends expressed their sympathy since they figured we were dead. We finished our meals and Erik and I set off on our sad way home.
My parents were waiting for us. They demanded an explanation. We supplied a verbal itinerary of the night’s events. As I finished our party disaster story my dad took a deep breath. “Lucky for you guys, we remember what it was like to be your age and have the opportunity to attempt a stunt such as the one you attempted. So you aren’t in that big of trouble. I think your punishment is justified by the cleaning you will do of this entire house. And, seeing as Erik’s arm is in a cast, it looks like the cleaning is all on you Danielle.” He had me cornered. I couldn’t complain of the unevenness in the punishment because things could have been a lot worse.
It turns out that our friend with the bloody face ran into the corner of our wall in the hallway. So his wound was self inflicted. Erik’s fall was his own doing. The only people who really got hurt did it to themselves. What a couple of dummies.
That night could have gone a lot worse. People could have gotten really hurt. The police could have been called where they would have discovered a lot of underage drinkers. This would have gotten me in a load of trouble being that I was the “adult” in charge. Luckily, we were spared the dramatic possibilities. I will never forget that night. And I am happy to announce we can all laugh about it now. Even until this day if a group member brings up that night, we all start laughing and reminiscing the memories of that night. I won’t ever forget that with every party planned, there is no guarantee that things will go as smoothly as you expect. I can confidently guarantee that I will not attempt to do any party throwing on my behalf again.