Guide to Barfing Out Of Your Mom’s Prius.

When you’re 28, you can’t party like you used to when you were 22.

A major reason why you can’t is because you’re now too smart to want to, and instead of guzzling grain alcohol until the party turns into a "do we need to go to the hospital" debate (answer: yes, because A. safety first, and B. it's funny), you sip some nice bourbon from a flask you brought until all the 22 year-old dudes pass out like flies around you, and then you calmly go home with one or more of their girlfriends. Or else you just leave, because who wants to hang out with a bunch of 22 year-olds who are chugging grain alcohol and barfing their lungs out? That’s not your kind of party.

But also if for some reason you’re 28 and stuck in all-22 world without a flask, you might be tempted to try to party like you did when you were 22, and you physically won’t be able to do it.

Let’s say it’s one of your asshole brother's college graduation, and they party in a different (not harder) way than you did when you were 22 because they’re on the Frisbee team at a gigantic state school that’s surrounded by those astounding drive-thru beerbuying places. Your college experience was more urban, and it involved more of a weird drug/bizarre behavior kind of experimental thing where you’re 17 years old and all of a sudden your head’s in some gigantic black drag queen’s dress on the dancefloor of some weird party you don’t know how to get home from. Not that Frisbee teams and state schools are better or worse, they’re just different.

Well, guess what? You’re not going to be able to handle the state school Frisbee team’s rigorous party program. And you really shouldn’t try it. Except sometimes you have to try something you’re not capable of in order to know not to try it again in the future. That is if you don’t die from whatever it is. You probably won’t die from partying like a 22 year-old with your asshole brother’s Frisbee friends. You’ll just feel old. And also near-fatally hungover. Which will also make you feel old because you’re too old to be that hungover. You like your days too much.

But this isn’t about partying. If you’re 28 and you get stuck in a night of pretending to be 22 for sibling rivalry dickmeasuring purposes, the real danger you’re running is barfing out of your mom’s Prius the next day. Pink stuff. On the highway. Because you couldn’t make it to the exit. Because you were fine until your mom and dad stopped at McDonald’s, and now the car is filling with that McDonald’s smell, and you’re trying to breathe shallow through your mouth, but inhaling McDonald’s is the opposite of what you need right now.

Puking is funny. There’s a level of drunk you can get that will absolutely cause puking before your body can feel better, and it doesn’t matter if you puke on the night of the drinking or the morning after or if you do everything in your power to keep it down until later in the afternoon, but end up puking anyway at like 3:30. It’s coming anyway, and you know it when you feel it. If you know you’re heading into a two hour Prius ride later, get it done early in the hotel before you leave so you can head directly into the “sleeping after you puked until your head doesn’t hurt” phase of the hangover.

I used to not have to worry about any of this when I was 22, but that’s how my hangovers work now. I can no longer be a hero about keeping a hold on my cookies. This is a fact I have to face but don’t want to. I can remember lustrous, wonderful times from my past where I’d look myself in the eye in the bathroom mirror and say, “Don’t you dare puke,” and my body would listen because it knew it might get laid if it did.

By now I have chosen sleep over getting laid often enough that my body’s no longer buying it. It’s sad. But after a while it gets like that. You no longer have that rush of, “Ohmigosh I’m having sex right now! Not so long ago I thought this would never happen to me! And now look at me! Sex!” I miss that rush a little, but sex is still good. It’s just that a good night’s sleep is sometimes better than sex now, which is great, and then there’s always the morning. For sex. Sometimes that’s a better way to do it because in the morning you have to hurry so you won’t be late for work.

AAAAANYHOO.

The real funny thing about barfing out of your mom’s Prius because you’re 28 and you tried to party like a 22 year old is that you’ve finally arrived on the scene as a co-adult with both of your parents. Because what is she going to do, ground you? No. You’re 28. You have your own place and you don’t even ask her for money anymore. In fact, you’d be more embarrassed about asking for money than you would be about barfing out of her new Prius. You’ll clean it up. No problem. You’re a little embarrassed, but no more than you would be after barfing out of your buddy’s car. The embarrassment is all internal “I’m too old to be barfing out of a moving vehicle” stuff. And you were at least adult enough to put your head all the way out of the window while you barfed so none got inside. Just maybe a little on your fingers that you have to wipe off with your dad’s McDonald’s napkins, which is fine because it was his fucking greasy Hot Apple Pie vapor that got you in this mess to begin with.

Your dad will laugh at you. This is fine. Your dad has been laughing at you like a co-adult (or at least a co-fratboy) for a while now, starting with that one time when you were 19 and he got drunk (and you were surprised that he allowed you to see him drunk, because it used to be a secret that you didn’t know about—also because he can handle his booze pretty good), and he then kicked you in the balls like how you and your asshole brothers used to kick each other in the balls, and you were like, “I literally cannot believe that my own father just kicked me in the balls just now. It is blowing my mind. Also: he nailed me good and my balls hurt, like, way a lot. It's like I can't believe how much my balls hurt, but I even more can't believe how they got that way.”

Remember how much he laughed and laughed? Eventually you laughed and laughed too because you saw the situation for what it was, a drunk father kicking his son in the balls as a joke and then laughing at the confused look on the son’s face as he tried in vain to comprehend what just happened while also suffering from the pain of a killer nutshot. That must have been the funniest face I’ve ever made. He was also laughing because he knew I don’t have it in me to kick my old man in the balls. So he could laugh freely without fear of retaliation.

Man, my dad is a dickhole. But he’s a funny dickhole, and sometimes funny wins. Often, in fact. And the more important thing to consider is how your dad finally feels free enough around you to be his regular drunken funny dickhole self without worrying about being a baddad developmental problem-creating feeling hurter. It was a weird endorsement of trust and pride. And if you have your feelings hurt by a dadstlye ballkick when you’re 19, you need to grow up, Nancy. You’re fine. Your nuts just got kicked into adulthood. Act accordingly.

Moms are a little different, though. While dads are quietly biding their time until kicking you in the balls is more funny than it is abusive, moms never quite get there. Or they don’t always get there. Sometimes they have flashes. But they’re women. They don’t think kicking people in the balls is all that funny. Which is a shame, because I would set a new world record for laughter if my mom somehow, someway on purpose kicked one of my brothers in the balls. Oh man. And I videotaped it? That would be so funny I would retire from life and just live in a cave on a hill eating berries and bark and laugh for the rest of my life, stopping into town only long enough to charge the batteries for my portable “constant loop of my mom kicking my brother in the balls” eyeball goggles that I’d invent to make sure it’s the only thing I’ll ever see again until I died. I don't even want to think of it anymore. It is my Shangri-La, doomed to haunt me forever.

But I don't have to worry about it ever happening because I think there’s something about the process of childbirth that makes moms worry about you forever. As they get older, they get better about not letting you know how worried they are. They instead replace all the worrying and nagging with an unstoppable torrent of banal life details, like how she ran into Todd Jenkins’s mom at Sam’s Club and she was buying a huge jar of pickles and she says Todd is living in Towson and he owns his own vinyl siding business, which is kind of ironic because of that big addition they put on their house, remember, with the Jacuzzi? Anyway, he’s married to a nice girl and they just had a daughter named Carlie. I’ll email you a picture if I can figure out how to work it.

What your mom is really telling you when she’s jabbering about Todd Jenkins is “I’m very concerned about your diet. Please, for the love of God, assure me you’re taking a daily multi-vitamin. I don’t want to have to ask you this. Just volunteer it. Listen to me right now. I’m talking about bulk-sized pickles. I feel ridiculous. Just please tell me you’re flossing regularly and I’ll stop. Please. I'm like a crazy person with this Todd Jenkins news.”

Nope. Your Mom will never stop worrying. But if you’re old enough, you can absolutely barf out of her Prius, and her only recourse is a nervous “oh you boys” eye roll that implies “Ok, tough guy, but I had better not be hearing about how you drove drunk and killed somebody. That would destroy me forever.” And she’s kind of got a point. There’s a reason you’ll never allow her to know about some of the stupider things you’ve done. It’s a very fucking good thing that she doesn’t know how to operate or view a blog. Fingers crossed. Sohard.

So: when you’re 28, unless you want to barf out of your mom’s Prius (which isn’t really the worst thing in the world, just maybe a little bit of an ego sting for not handling your cheap, Frisbee-team-style-guzzled booze) maybe take it easy on the vodka flipcup. Pretend you’re too mature for it or something, and when somebody calls you a pussy, agree that you are a pussy. You indeed are a 28 year old pussy. And you need a good night’s sleep for tomorrow’s Prius ride.