Step, the first: Arrive in your hometown with more than a little end-of-year/holiday steam to blow off. Throw in the fact that two of your best friends are touching down for family visits at various parts of the fair “forest city”. Top it off with Jim Bob Rays’ annual Christmas day fiesta, and douse it with cheap tequila, both in product price and quality, and you’ve got yourself a stage set for night to remember (or in some cases, not).

Let me also share for those who weren’t fortunate enough to attend The University of Western Ontario, that London bars are not like bars in Toronto, or New York, or LA. The meathead bouncers do not give a flying fuck who you are, what you do, or where you come from. “Back of the line, every body waits in line!!” They yell out. We stand there in our toques, befuddled, “Tisk tisk” we think. It was 11pm and it was lined up 150 people long down the street. This was a job for Moses.

Moses is Destinee’s dully appointed nickname, because she can part crowds like the red sea, often with a simple diva glare, and in the countless times I’ve rolled with her, she’s never met a line she could not bypass. So in her especially cheerful holiday mood, she goes straight for the kill and quietly exclaims to the bouncer “Listen, I really didn’t want to pull this card, but we’re really important, so we’re going to just head on in now.” We all snickered to ourselves. This was ballsy, even for D.

Well, wouldn’t you know, next thing, we’re in, and it’s like going to an elementary/highschool reunion. Familiar faces everywhere. So many muffin tops, so much bad facial hair. So many of those who peaked in highschool. Sigh. This was a trip down memory lane indeed.

Another tip about London bars is that the wait for service is really long, and bartenders are really bad about serving the legal two drink maximum per customer, so it’s best to order, say, 16 tequlia shots off the top, and stake out a table in the corner which you will call “home base” for the night. This gives you a bit of space and also prevents you from getting ass grinded by some underage/Western chick who’s got a hard-on to defy her parents for the tough time she had growing up in upper middle class suburbia… “I know, life’s just not fair- you shake that ass.”

This brings me to the bathroom scenario. Jim Bob Rays is ill-equipped to say the least. The lineup must have been 20 girls long. 20 girls desperate to pee, from downing vodka cranberry after vodka water bar lime, and so forth. And when girls push by to say “She’s going to be sick!” or “Just using the mirror!” You know this is an outright lie, and that they must think you are stupid. In my younger years, this predictable and highly annoying behaviour would irritate the shit out of me, but tonight, I am doing it, so I just laugh and know that my turn has come.

Conclusions: If you are lucky enough to still be able to visit your local watering hole from when you were a youth, I would highly recommend it. It brings a lot into perspective. Like, how boys you thought were cute when you were 16, are now fat, and still going to the same bar that they were sneaking into when they were kids. Girls that were mean to you in highschool will still give you cut eye with reckless abandon, then will add you on Facebook the next day, and creep the shit out of you, because they are simple and sad. And, lastly, it will remind you that things were fun back then, but fuck, are they EVER fun now!

Cheers!