Bachelor Patio

The benefit of a french-immersion course, besides ensuring that your child will become a successful flight attendant, is that when they call for a cab in Montreal, one will actually collect them.
Not the case for this anglophone.

I'm ordering another tarantula today.
Don't tell my mom.
The west coast of Newfoundland has much larger spiders than the east coast.
I suppose they're necessary for ensnaring the massive, unyielding bird-moths that live here.
There are a bunch of them among the bedroom's ceiling corners as I type.
I insist upon keeping them there because I'm difficult to live with.
Anyway, wanna see?

It will look much like the one that this engaged person is sporting.
Andie agreed to the idea because she never thought I would actually get around to ordering one.
Since I'm so lazy and all.
However, she didn't anticipate how focused I am when it comes to spending money.
I 'feed' wild spiders all the time. I'll grab some stupid bug and throw it into a web. 
I'm on the side of the good guys.
Spiders will never give you an itchy bite on the webbing between your fingers, or on your genitals.

Speaking of an uncomfortable penis, paint-balling was on the docket for the bachelor party.
Any of my readers who are in the fan club and have the member's sew-on patch already know how I feel about paintball:
Strongly 'for'.
We trundled ourselves and our beer coolers into St. John's so as to bruise and intoxicate Colin.
We all stood about in Frontline's parking lot as we tried to pretend it wasn't 35 degrees outside.
Difficult for Newfoundlanders to do, as they tend to complain about warm weather more frequently than they even do about cold weather.
I shot two people in my first round.
Brian, however, also shot me in the head and on the hand - two places that are specifically known for being unpleasant.
I didn't really care, what with the adrenaline and all.
My body is so unfamiliar with it that even a thimble-full toughens me right up.
However, when the ball hit my head (forehead corner region) I heard a distinct ringing noise for half a second, which I wasn't crazy about.
I crawled through the thickets on my stomach and elbows and had a wonderful time.
Eventually, we pelted Colin with the remaining balls we had left.
He was permitted to defend himself, and he managed to shoot Ian right on the head of the penis!
Once he had finished doubling over, I believe that even Ian was a little tickled that it had happened. 

We ate barbecue at a nice woman's house and I mixed some incredibly shitty daquiris.
They always look so tasty in the movies, but I definitely took a wrong turn in the mixology somewhere.
For the safety of pedestrians, we took a cab downtown.
We went to Lottie's and I drank one White Russian before laying the other one aside.
Disembodied hands gave me these drinks, so far as I know.
I have no idea who bought them.
I learned, over breakfast the following morning, that we had gone to a second bar.
I couldn't remember this.
I did an Irish Car Bomb? Pardon me?
When did that happen?
Don't remember that. And I did pretty well at it?
That would be a first for drinking any beverage of any kind.
Well, that's fuzzy.
No, now that you mention it, I can't really remember how I got home or how I ended up in our hotel room.
Guess I took a cab. I'd hate to know how much I tipped that guy.
Luckily, I have no recollection of interacting with anyone after my half-hour conversation with some truck driver at the bar.
He, in fact, is about the only part of the evening that I do recall.
We talked about life on the road.
If I hadn't been so hammered, I'm sure I would have found it depressing.
Breakfast was dandy the following morning as everyone recounted their drink orders.
Some hard-on with a power drill kept interupting our brainwaves while doing some sort of renovation.
I was tempted to say to the waitress, "Can you please tell the man with the drill that he's negatively impacting your tip?" but I decided not to be catty.
Besides, I'd already confused the woman when she asked me how I liked my eggs and I told her that I didn't know.
All of Colin's old friends were there (the only kind he has these days).
It's a beautiful thing, really.
A collection of memories and laughs, all bundled into a group of men standing on a patio.
Bachelor parties are the echoes of childhood that men rarely get to hear once they become men.
The hair thins and the eyes wisen and the wives get in the way, but the personalities persist, unerred, once the boys get together.