"I'd Like a Bottle of Your Finest Myers's Rum, Please"

My brother Mike and I were naughty boys; there’s no getting around the fact. We were less naughty than some, naughtier than others. Regardless of the degree, we were naughty enough.

If it were to come down to the two of us, most would agree that Mike had more of an innate tendency toward finding trouble than I did. He was one of those kids who could be counted on to go along with you on whatever hair-brained scheme you had thought of. He was a “Yes-Man.”

I, on the other hand, was a bit of a worry wart. My mother nick-named me “The Fish in the Pot,” referring to the Dr. Seuss character in The Cat in the Hat who was always warning the children, “You’d better clean that up before your parents got home.”

Despite this tendency, I still managed to get into my share of shenanigans, some of which I’ve covered in these pages previously. When my parents made the mistake of getting Mike and me an adjoining room in our hotel in Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands when I was sixteen and Mike was fourteen, we took full advantage.

The plan was that once we knew our parents were asleep, I would make my way down to the hotel bar and purchase a bottle of alcohol for us to drink. I’m not sure we knew what, exactly, we wanted. Probably up to that point we’d tried beer, Southern Comfort, and maybe Jack Daniels. I think I had a vague idea that rum was something you drank in the tropics.

I don’t know how we got our hands on it, but I dressed up in my dad’s tweed jacket, and I combed my hair to the side, the way I supposed one does when one is older and more mature. We discussed what I would say when the bartender asked me for my identification. We made up some elaborate story that he wouldn’t have any choice but to believe.

When I got down to the darkly-lit bar, I made my way shakily to the end, where the waiters and waitresses put in their orders. The bartender looked at me in a way that made me feel like a nuisance.

“What can I get you?” he asked.

I drew a blank and asked for the first thing I saw in front of me, “I’ll take a bottle of your finest Myers’s Rum, please.”

“Dark or light?”

Shit. No idea. Again, I went with the first option. “Dark, please.”

Without giving it a second thought, the bartender charged me what I’m sure was an absurdly inflated price for the bottle, which he handed over to me in a brown paper bag.

Mike was sitting in the lounge, waiting for me. We watched the stand-up comedian who was performing; I don’t remember her routine any more, but I do remember being aware of the fact that the things she was saying were way raunchier than anything I’d ever heard anyone say in public before.

We sat by the pool and drank shots out of the bottle, giggling loudly in a way that I’m still surprised did not stir suspicion, invite the police, or wake up our parents. We stripped down and went skinny dipping, dangerously intoxicated, I now realize looking back on it. The bottle got the best of us; I ditched it – not even half-empty – into a row of hedges, where I’m sure some happy groundskeeper found it eventually.

Poor Mike spent the next day sick as a dog, and I didn’t fare much better. I slept it off on the beach, getting a horrible sunburn in the process. We had some fun, paid the price, and learned a lesson. It’s a story that’s either fun or disturbing, depending on how you look at it. Let’s just say I’ll be watching my sons closely, and there won’t be any adjoining rooms happening without some seriously close scrutiny.

“Do as I say, my boys, not as I have done.”

God help me….