Youth, Beer, and Police
In the winter of ohhh.... 1992 or so, I attended a Canadian engineering student conference in Hamilton, Ontario. Ahh, Hamilton - if Toronto is the armpit of Canada, than Hamilton is surely the arsehole. At any rate, it was the normal booze-fuelled state of barely-contained violence and lawbreaking that was the norm for engineering students, complete with theft of the giraffe from the city nativity scene and the attempted dangling of a Volkswagen Beetle from a bridge.

"Attempted", you ask? Yes, "attempted" - needless to say, civil engineering students may not necessarily be the appropriate parties to plan a stunt that involved hooking a large chain to the bumper of said Beetle, and to the rail of the bridge, before pushing it over the side. It's called "shock loading", lads, look it up. The Beetle fell. And floated. And started battering the bridge abutments, whilst being pushed around by the river current.

Said brilliant Civils fled the scene. Approximately 6 hours later, the fine fellows of the local constabulary applied their powers of deduction and realised that the culprits were likely some of them brainy types over at yarn yooniversity, and dragged them out of the conference (guess someone fingered 'em). Oh how we laughed...

So anyway, that evening, after the dumb Civils from the wrong coast got bailed out, it was time for (yet another) party. We (mechanicals) decided to host the party in our room, after having visited everyone else's rooms (in various parts of the hotel - silly bastards did NOT give us the two dedicated topmost floors and the empty buffer floor they were supposed to - this is important later kids, pay attention) and jiggering the cable boxes to supply free porn. We filled an entire bathtub with layer after layer of crushed ice and beer. Brings a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat to remember it even now. It was a thing of beauty.

Somehow, all the beer disappeared. I dunno. Thermodynamics or something. So there were about 200 heavily inebriated and otherwise self-medicated engineering students roaming the hallways, visiting each other's rooms, and more often than not, the rooms of complete strangers who were less than impressed by the invasion of the drunken idiots.

The hotel management called the cops. The cops, already somewhat peeved at us, what with missing giraffes and bridge battering Beetles, sent the riot police. I shit you not. Full body armour, shields, and shotguns. Against drunk engineers.

By this time, I had progressed beyond drunkennes into some wierd Zen-like state of mental inertness. I was wandering the hallways with some chums, carrying my frigging huge Engineering mug (capable of holding more than 2 pints of beer).

We turn a corner, and there's two riot cops glaring at us. One pushes my buddy up against the wall, and one starts in on me.

"What are you doing?"

"Walking" (ever helpful, I thought he might have had trouble observing the obvious)

"Where are you walking TO?"

My Zen calm shattered. "None of your fucking business, you little maggot of a man! I'm a private citizen in a free country and I paid for my fucking hotel room, and I'll walk around the hotel if I fucking well want, and no little wanna-be Gestapo brown shirt is gonna STOP me!"

Rather eloquent, I thought. Wise, no. He starts in on me. "Why are you doing this? You've got a career ahead of you, and you're going to get arrested for carrying around an open container of liquor and for disturbing the peace and resisting arrest and..."

By this time, his goon-like henchman had come over to watch the fun, and snatched my mug from me. Placing to his nose, he sniffed. Perplexed, he dipped his finger in the liquid and tasted it.

"Errr... it's water"

"Eh?" says brown shirt #1.

"Water. He's carrying a mug of water."

“Water?”

“Yep.”

At which point, the way cool mad robotics inventor prof from the U of Toronto showed up and dragged me off to his room for more drinking. But not before I rescued my mug. I get thirsty when I’m drunk. And that’s my most funnest run-in with the law.

Yes, this is my first post. My B3ta hymen is officially broken. And the username? After failing miserably at my first 3 attempts at a unique name, I got peeved.
(buggeringfuck, Fri 9 Jan 2004, 5:40, Reply)