Being Held Against My Will Can Be Fun

Until Saturday night, I had never actually been held against my will before. Now granted this was at a friend’s house and we were celebrating their twins’ birthdays, but there was still some post-party detaining that occurred. It’s not often that I get to visit with the friends I grew up with, but when we do, it’s like we haven’t missed a beat. Except for the part where they all told me that they couldn’t believe I had just finally seen Monty Python’s Holy Grail. I should have seen that coming. Oh well. I guess it’s a good sign you are getting older when the only times you find to reunite anymore are for your kids’ birthdays.

And so it was that I found myself with my friends Saturday night. As the night went on, I realized I was going to eventually have to blog about it. Of course I couldn’t keep that fact to myself, so now everyone is looking forward to reading this post-party post. So, hello M, S, D, T, L, D and J. It became clear pretty early on that by attending the birthday celebration I had temporarily waived my rights to make my own decisions. Apparently, my friend and the proud dad of the birthday boys purchased what equated to his own entire cow for the purpose of grilling it for the party. Rumor has it he was allowed to select and stun the bovine himself. I believe the actual slaughtering was done by a third party, but I’m getting that information second hand. If you are playing along at home, I think that makes about five people total who contributed to that story. As we got our plates, we were informed by M that there was a five-pound minimum on meat consumption for each person in attendance. I joked about it, but he was serious. It wasn’t helped by the fact that J ate no meat, thereby requiring many of us to take up her meat ingesting slack.

I was again reminded that I had waved my rights at the front door when it came time for the birthday cake. I don’t care for cake, so politely passed on it. Five minutes later, I could be found with a plate of cake in my hands, courtesy of the Five Pound Minimum Meat Nazi (it’s a friendly term, I swear). It was while eating my cake and a few of our friends had already parted that two of us were asked, no told, that we were not being allowed to leave because that would mean only the host’s family and in-laws would be left. In a way, we had become human shields. We protested but knew that we would be stopped short of the door if we attempted any kind of escape. We relented. I can’t speak for the other detainee, but the opportunity to use the huge pirate themed rented bounce house was enough to lure me away from the front door.

So there we were, two grown men and two grown women that had known each other for almost 20 years in a bounce house. I made a joke to the Five Pound Minimum Meat Nazi as we all stood in the bounce house that I used to think this would be something that would happen to me in a dream sequence. Cue the ensuing awkward silence…I thought it was funny.

I don’t know a lot of things, but I can tell you two facts about bounce houses that I am now completely sure of. The first is that standing, let alone jumping, in a bounce house in 100 degree plus heat is the equivalent of driving thirty miles down the highway in the middle of the desert in the summer with the heater on. It got a little rank. The second thing I now know beyond any doubt is that someone who suffers from inner ear damage and fluid imbalance and is prone to vertigo (like me, for example) should never, ever be in a bounce house with adults who are all trying to jump higher and harder than everyone else. I kept getting bounced (and by bounced I mean tumbling wildly off balance) into the weakest corner of the bounce house. While my inability to remain standing up more the 15 seconds became a little embarrassing, I achieved a long time goal of mine. I was able to make a bounce house collapse. Not just once mind you, but five different times. Sadly, I could not even use the excuse that I was drunk. When we finally all got out, I was just glad that the host is in the medical field as I think I was only one bounce away from needing cardiac resuscitation.

As it got later into the night, my fellow hostage and I realized that hostage-ness has its privileges. Namely, the ability to raid the hosts’ fridge without guilt because we were being used as human shields against family. She wanted cereal, she got cereal. I wanted 7-layer dip, I got 7-layer dip. I could definitely get used to this detainee thing. For me, the most intriguing part of the night had to be when the 4 of us began trying to confirm a rumor about an old friend of ours. At one point, we were all in the same room using three different computers trying to Google the name of this friend. It reminded me of something from an episode of CSI until someone pointed out how horrible we would be because after 45 minutes and three people trying to internet search, we had come up empty.

All in all, it was a great night and I don’t even mind that there was no one around who cared enough to pay my ransom. The best part of the night was about 10 minutes after I got home and my phone rang to inform me that the party hosts had finally found the info on our old friend we had been trying to Google. I’m thinking everyone in the group needs to have more kids so we can all get together more often.