Big Moments, Part 3

For awhile I debated about including this next Big Moment in the series because I feared it would make me seem like the degenerate, deadbeat drunk I've been trying to be less and less in the recent months. Then I realized you can't run from the past. Even if I'm not the sputtering, stumbledrunk of yestermonth, I was that person at some point and it helped making me the quietly muttering, sitdown drunk I am today. So, with personal reflection aside, I present Big Moment 3, 'The First Time I Drank Key Ice'

It was February 2008, a month many will remember for giving us such humanity-improvers such as, well, pretty much nothing. However, for one young college freshmen, the world was about to be rocked. I believe I was at a party, some type of mass bro-out, getting weird sort of thing. Lot's of beers were being crushed, raucous laughter filled the air and a general fratitude pervaded the air. There was enough testosterone in the air to sprout chest hair on even the lily whitest young lad. Amidst this jubiliant boisterousness, a friend of our we'll call Hurricane Brien walked, or moreso, drunkenly hobbled up to me.
Before I go any further, we should take a quick note on the life of Hurrican Brien. He is a disaster. He has been known to blackout on a whim and roar through an establishment with the kind of shouting, teeth-gnashing bravado reserved only for the much too drunk. He once took a TV--around which several people gathered, watching a movie--and thrown it unceremoniously out a 3rd floor window because someone said 'he was too big a pussy to do it'. He has thrown bricks at people, woken up in strange garages, and berated a bartender for not knowing how to mix the purely imaginational 'Strawberry'.
On this night, however, Hurrican Brien wasn't acting as agent of chaos, but as a bearer of good things. In his deep state of inebriation, Brien stumbled to me and held out a can of Key Ice, offering, 'You wanna beer?' I took the can in my hand, tossing my empty Natty Light can on the floor. What is this? I thought. The can was sleek and black, I thought it might be European. I cracked it open and sipped. It tasted different from regular Keystone. Something I couldn't put my finger on. On I drank. In my child-like wonder, I asked Brien what the difference between Key Ice and Key Light was. Hurrican Brien responded, a true scholar, 'Ice has more fuckin' booze in it, man!'
This shook my foundations. There was a beer out there with MORE booze in it? This is the best idea any one has ever had. I began lapping up Key Ice with gusto, and soon learned that while Key Ice has more booze than your average beer, it also posesses an unknown ingredient that can turn the mildest-mannered of men into a raving, semi-violent maniac. It brings out the beast in the best of guys, it is truly a substance that can make or break your night, week, month or life. Stupidity thrives in the grip of a Key Ice frenzy. On another semi-important note, the night I 'enjoyed' my first Key Ice was also one of my inaugural lessons in the science of Alcohol By Volume, or, ABV. Now, my knowledge of ABV is a curse and blessing, as I can be seen standing in a liquor store, seemingly endlessy, taking down bottles and reading the ABV, making sure I get enough bang for my buck.
The First Time I Drank Key Ice was indeed a big moment for me, as it closed the casual drinker chapter of my life and opened up the section on being a full fledged rageoholic.