Big Moments, Part 2

This next tale of my formative years brings us to the winter of my 13th year. 7th grade, what a glorious time. The particular event on which we will dwell was a wellspring of the very essence that grips me to this day. Yes, dear reader, this big moment is 'The First Time I Bro-ed Out With the Boys".

This tale begins, unassumingly enough, on a church youth group ski trip. Before I go any further, it is imperative that the reader know that my hometown is on the cashing end of some sort of bizarre genetic jackpot where everyone had sons and no daughters. In my youth, there were four families all with four sons living within a ten mile radius of each other. Every now and then someone managed to have a girl, but these tend to look like boys anyways. So, I continue, this ski trip was set upon with my original crew of tween bros. There were 8 of us, I believe, on that fateful Saturday, and we set out in a convoy of Chevy Suburbans and Dodge Caravans, headed for Laramie, Wyoming. After a day of talentless and graceless skiing, we set to return home. But providence held something else in store. Yes, the winds were blowing that day, the winds of new discovery and burgeoning manhood. Oh, and they were blowing a bigass snow storm towards Laramie, too. As our noble drivers tried to navigate the perilous blizzard, their actions grew more and more futile. The storm was too bad. We were snowed in. We'd have to stay in Cheyenne.
This was the most momentous news of our young lives. Us? Stay in Cheyenne? Why, this gaggle of 8 very eligible bachelors would be staying--only semi-supervised--in the classy digs of the Cheyenne Holiday Inn? This was it. This was our chance to break our small town bonds of continual parental supervision, our chance to spread our wings, our chance to fly! Oh, and fly we did. We ran rampant--or at least what at 13 seems rampant--over that hotel. We jumped in the pool in our underwear. We filled our bathtub full of ice and tried to throw someone in. We jumped on the bed and watched the dirty late night shows on HBO! However, the Bedlam drew to a somber close around the unheard hour of 2 am when, amidst the disarray of frenzied juvenescence, a lamp was broken. This was very serious to us, and we spent the better part of the next hour concocting a fool proof alibi. One of us was a sleepwalker and had broken the lamp in an intrepid bout of nocturnal locomotion. This would surely convince them of our innocence!
The broken lamp certainly dampered the rest of the night, and some of us lay sleepless worrying of the broken lamps long term reprecussions. We walked out of that hotel to the cleared interstate the next day filled with a new emotion. This was the first time we had known a regrettable morning after a night of wanton mayhem. We were charged from our boisterous antics but leary of the consequences of our rough shenanigans. And while nothing ever became of the broken lamp, that day would always be remembered as 'The First Time I Bro-ed Out With the Boys'.