For most people, the term hazing usually triggers a mental image of college boys yelling and screaming at puny little 18-year-old boys, forcing them to chug concoctions of toothpaste, meatloaf, pickle juice, and other substances which a girl could not come up with if she tried. Yeah, that’s what I used to think of until my friend pointed out to me that I haze cab drivers with ridiculous demands. When I tried to claim that it was just a one time thing, she started rattling off all the times I hazed cab drivers and so I decided I had to put this in writing.

So you get in a cab and tell the driver where you want to go, they drop you off, they give you a fee to pay, you pay it and get out, right? Wrong. That is not how it works with me, not when late night dance parties, cigarette-smoking, late night food, and being short on change is involved.

As I started reminiscing about all of my cab ride experiences, one particular time came to mind. It was about 1AM when my friend and I decided we were tired of the bar scene and were going to head home, so we split a cab. We dropped her off first because I decided I wanted to swing by our local neighborhood bar to pick up a pizza on the way home. I drunkenly called the pub, placed an order for a veggie pizza, the cab driver dropped off my friend, and took me to the bar.

When we arrived, I told him that the pizza would not be ready for another ten minutes and demanded that he turn off the car so that the meter did not run up my bill. He turned the car off without argument, believe it or not. It was a non-smoking cab but we had time to kill so I asked him if I could smoke in his car and he said no. When I asked him why not he told me he would get in trouble with the cab company. I assured him that everything would be okay and he just needed to get an air-freshener; I lit my cigarette, he said nothing, and I won the battle. About ten minutes after sitting in the driveway of the pub, I asked him in my kindest tone if he would take my cash inside the bar and get my pizza. People were still there and I did not want to run the risk of seeing anyone I knew who might question why I was by myself, intoxicated, retrieving a pizza at 1:15 in the morning and getting back into a sketchy van.

Without hesitation, the cabbie got out of the van, took my cash and went inside to pay for my pizza. While I sat there in the backseat of the van trying to be discrete about this pizza mission, the sliding door swung open and all of the lights in the cab turned on; the cab driver handed me my remaining cash and pizza and I saw a crowd of people at the bar just staring at me sitting in the back of the cab. I waved to the bouncer who I had made friends with at a karaoke bar as I grabbed the door and slammed it shut in the hopes that no one else spotted my pathetic state of laziness. As we drove away, the cab driver could not stop laughing because his other fat-ass of a cab driver buddy (one that I have crossed paths with in previous cab ride experiences) was making snide remarks about the “piece of shit” that could not get out of the cab and get her own pizza.

In closing, the only two conclusions I made were the following: one, the veggie pizza was delicious and, two, I really do not care what that colossal cab driver was saying about me. I have witnessed him almost hitting a telephone poll when driving inebriated kids, one of them being me, from one place to another and making inappropriate phone calls to one of my friends after-hours to see what she was up to because he was bored; maybe he should be the one considering his ranking on the “piece of shit” scale. As for me, I can say my only regret is that I wish I would have gotten this particular cabbie’s number; he has a “can-do” attitude that needs to permeate the rest of the cab-driving universe.

Ladies, I don’t know about you, but us guys, we tend to do that…well…a lot. And yeah, I am talking about what you’re thinking of. I tend to think its just human nature, but maybe we’re just disgusting pigs.

In college, roommates tend to know their roommate’s schedules better than we know our own. I always knew that I would have some personal time on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 11:30 to 12:25 and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:30 until 2:15. I know it is pathetic, but that’s just the way it is.

One particular night my roommate was leaving on a trip. His friends wanted to leave around midnight, so as I was getting ready for bed, he was getting ready to leave. Midnight came, he said goodbye, and went on his way. Laying there in bed, drifting off to sleep I began to feel the urge. Now I wasn’t happy about getting the urge; I was ready to go to sleep. But when you get the urge, there’s no turning back.

I got out of bed and went over to my desk to take care of business, but this day was different than most days. I didn’t take the same precautions that I typically would, because my roommate had left about fifteen minutes prior to go out of town. As I was sitting there, fully exposed to the silence of my room, I hear the door open. I was in the heat of the moment and had no where to go. I got caught. Now I’m a good sport about these things, because I can see the humor in the situation, but I was completely embarrassed.

My roommate showed no mercy. He could have walked back out; he could have given me a second to shield myself; he could have done anything other than what he did – he ran down the hall to tell all of my hallmates what had just happened. So to defend my honor I threw on a pair of mesh shorts and ran shirtless down the hall after him. Needless to say, everyone had a good laugh at my expense.

-Costanza

This past summer a few of my college buddies all came to visit me to have a guys night out on the town. Everyone came over in the early evening and we grilled out and began drinking a few beers while we decided where to go.

While in the process of narrowing down a bar, one of my friends just told the rest of the group that he had consumed two Xanax pills in order to make the night a little more interesting. I don’t know much about prescription drugs, but I am pretty sure he just took a double of a daily dose, and planned to consume more alcohol on top of the pills.

We make it to the bar, where the music is blaring and there are too many guys and too few women. The beers and shots begin to flow when a table finally opens up, so we grab it while its still available.

We sit down and continue our conversation and order another bucket of beers. I see a cute (yes, not ugly) girl on the dance floor, so I decide to make my way over and see if she can hang with my sweet dance moves. She could defiantly hang, and I figure we danced through about two or three beers before I realized that I needed to cool off for a few minutes.

I go back to the table, open another beer before I notice something not right out of the corner of my eye. I turn my head to get a better view and see my pill popping friends head is down and is being held up by the palm of his hands. I reach over to see if he is passed out and shake his arm and the only sound produced was a loud moan and grumble combination. He lifted his head up for a few seconds and a trail of drool was going from his lip to the floor of the bar. I couldn’t help but start to laugh and even got a few of my other friends involved in this bizarre sense of humor.

After a few more minutes of poking fun, I noticed my friend really didn’t look well, so I told him to go to the bathroom and throw up. He got up (drool chin and all) and managed to walk to the bathroom. After 10 or 15 minutes of my friend having not returned I grew worried and walked into the bathroom to check on him. I looked in the first stall and there he was, dry heaving his brains out, with the bathroom attendant a few bar customers watching in awe.

When he stood up, he fell back down, so I had to help him up. I had to carry him and his vomit covered chin back to our table. I tried to round up the rest of our crew, but I wasn’t quick enough. Word had spread from the bathroom attendant that my friend was drunk and puking, so the bouncer tossed everyone out of the bar. Typical.

We make it to the front of the bar, carrying our friend and wait for the rest of our party. Meanwhile, my friend decides he needs to vomit again. Where am I going to tell him to go? We are standing next to another bouncer who is checking ID’s and are surrounded by cars since we are in a parking lot. I tell him to vomit if he needs to, and not to hold back. And the dry heaving begins yet again, this time in front of a line of people waiting to get in the bar.

My friend is making enough noise to steer some customers away from the bar, so now the bouncer get involved by telling us to get off his property. I tried to explain that we were off bar property, and were in the parking lot, but he didn’t want to listen. He said he was going to call the cops if we weren’t gone in the next two minutes.

My friend and I picked up the pill popper and began walking him back to my apartment. We didn’t make it more than 3 blocks before pill popper claims he couldn’t walk anymore. He faceplanted right into the lawn of a church and began throwing up again. (note: this was a Saturday night around 1am, so church was in less than 8 hours). I couldn’t help but laugh a little, and as I looked around, I noticed a police officer was directing traffic on the corner, and cars passing by began honking at my friend who was throwing up, again.

The police officer walked over and asked what was wrong. I didn’t think replying with “food poisoning” was a great idea, so I just offered that he had a little too much to drink and we were on the way back to my apartment 3 blocks away. He said if he wasn’t off the lawn in 3 minutes, he was going to jail. We all tried to pick our friend off the lawn, but he wouldn’t stop moaning and groaning about how he couldn’t walk any further and that he didn’t care if he went to jail. Great.

We manage to get him up and we continue to walk back to my apartment. I really don’t know what I was thinking during this next part, but I wanted to see how drunk/messed up my friend really was. He had just fallen into another bush a block from my apartment and the moaning was becoming unbearable. I picked up a stick and threw it in the direction of his groin area. WHAM! He didn’t move. We all couldn’t stop laughing after that happened. Our friend was sitting in a bush, and had just had a stick thrown at his nuts.

We FINALLY make it back to my apartment. There are about 6 of us there and I have no idea what to do with my friend. I get a really bright idea by handing him an old bathing suit and putting him in the shower. I figure the warm water will either sober him up or will add to his state of delusion, which he would appreciate. He sits in the tub and I crank the water on for him and walk out. Two reasons this was not a good idea: 1) I only have 1 bathroom, 2) he kept moaning. FUCK!

I went in to use the bathroom (the shower curtain was closed) and as I flushed the toilet, my friend became screaming uncontrollably about how the water was burning hot. I had no idea what he was talking about and by the time I put my hand to the water in the shower, it was a normal temperature. I really thought my friend was going crazy by this point.

Another person went to use the bathroom and the same scenario occurred, my friend was screaming his lungs out about the water. You see, since I live in a 1 bedroom apartment, and it had never occurred that the toilet flushing and the shower water were connected. When my friend would start screaming everyone in the living room would start laughing to the point of tears. Most of us were drunk by this point and I promise, hearing a grown man scream about hot water after what had happened earlier couldn’t have topped the night off any better. I believe all of us continued to flush the toilet for the next hour or so and fell asleep with him going “pleeeezzzz, waterrrrr, hottttttt, stoppppp”.

-sinbad