It was the fall of my first year of graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. (And yes, it turned out to be my only year at that graduate school, ya smartass. Hush up, now -- I'm tellin' a story.)

Anyway, I didn't know very many people yet, but I did know Joe. Everybody knew Joe -- he'd gone to undergrad at Pitt, went out a lot, very friendly, Italian, good-looking (or so the coed cootchie girls told me)... a real 'life of the party' type, Joe was.

And Joe, bless his little tortellini-shaped heart, was from Punxsutawney. And on one fateful day that first autumn, as we sat in a bar, drinking beer and scanning for women he could hit on, Joe told me about this little get-together he was having back home. A social. A gathering. A soiree, if you will.

In other words, a raging, out of control, 'holy shit, the parents are out of town; let's trash their house' kegger. A multi-kegger, even, with hordes of sweaty young drunkards careening and stumbling and falling in the rose bushes. It was gonna be a real bash, and did I want to go home to 'Punxsey' with him that weekend to attend?

Well. Here's where I made my first mistake. I knew nothing of Punxsutawney. I had no idea who'd be at the party, and once I knew who they were, I still wouldn't know any of them. Hell, I barely knew Joe, though I was pretty sure he wouldn't strip me naked and leave me by the side of the road out in Bumblefuckville, either. (One or the other, perhaps -- the stripping, or the leaving -- but not both. He's cool like that.)

And besides, I had plenty of work to get done, and really couldn't afford to go gallivanting off to some other town for the whole damned weekend. Not if I wanted to stay in school, anyway. (And yes, I think you can probably see where this is going by now. Bright one, you are.)

On the other hand, I thought to myself, I'm a sweaty young drunkard. I careen. I stumble. And if I'm gonna fall down anyway, it's nice to know that Joe has rose bushes to break my fall. And I'm not gettin' any drunker just sitting here thinking about it, so what the hell -- I'm goin' to Punxsey! How far away could it possibly be, anyway?

Like I said... mistake number one.

So, Friday afternoon rolled around. I packed a change of clothes and my toothbrush, and off we went in Joe's little Honda. And went. And went. And went, and...

Me: 'Joe, just how the frigging far is Punxsutawney, anyway?'
Joe: 'Oh. Yeah, you're right. We should grab some food. It'll be a while longer.'

*sigh*

So, what I thought would be a half-hour trip or so turned into a three hour trek, thanks to a late start, Pittsburgh rush hour traffic, and a short detour for a couple of Whoppers. But finally, mercifully, we arrived in Punxsey.

Now, as I recall, the party was slated for Saturday evening. I don't remember much about that first Friday night, and I don't think anything terribly interesting (read: horrible, asinine decisions on my part) happened, so let's fast-forward to Saturday afternoon.

Joe and I head to the grocery store for supplies. By this point, there were already a couple of people at his house, and they handled picking up the beer and booze and various accessories. (They let us down on the strippers. I would have sworn we told them to get strippers. Meh.)

That left it to the two of us to pick up sodas and snackies and chips. (Oh, my!) And that's just what we were doing, when I made horrific mistake number two:

Me: 'Hey, Joe -- come check this out. Whaddaya think about one of these?'
Joe: 'A watermelon? For what?'
Me: 'Well, it's still summer, almost. We could eat it. Or back at school, we would soak 'em in alcohol sometimes.'
Joe: 'That might be fun. You know how to do that?'
Me: 'Um... sure. I guess. How hard could it be, right?'
Joe: 'Yeah, okay, I guess. Pick it up.'

And thus we had a watermelon. We didn't need a watermelon. Nobody asked for a damned watermelon. Soon, several of us would rue the day that we'd ever heard of watermelon. But me and my big watermouth got us a watermelon, and that was that.

Fast-forward again to the party. It was maybe six, seven o'clock at night. People had been trickling in for a couple of hours, hitting the keg(s), playing some tunes, hanging out on the back lawn. So far, so tame.

I'd met a couple of folks, and was having a pretty good time. Several people had seen and spoken of the watermelon, but it was still sitting there, untouched, on the kitchen counter. Eventually, as the booze flowed more freely, interest in the melon increased. Joe announced that I knew what the hell to do with the thing, and that I should get cracking with it.

Oh. Um. Okay. How hard can it be, right? Stupid decision number three.

Me: 'Well... uh, we just always cut a hole in the top and poured some stuff in there, really. Here, I'll just cut a little triangle out with this knife. Okay, there. Now just... I dunno. Let's put something in there.'
UFO (Unintelligible Fucked-up Observer): 'Here... throws thihsss in it, duuude.'

At which point, he started pouring and sloshing and spilling a bottleful of clear liquid in the general direction of the watermelon. I took it from him to steady it, and kept pouring into the hole I'd made.

Me: 'What is this, anyway, man?'
UFO: 'Hunh? Oh. Oh... ish okay. Itsh just grain.'
Me: 'Grain? Like 190 proof grain?'
UFO: 'Yeeeah, dudesh. Ish guuuud shtuff.'

I looked down to see the last of the contents of the bottle *glug glug glug* into the watermelon. Oh, fuck. This was not going to be pretty.

A few of us spent the next half-hour or so sloshing the melon around (sounds sexual, but isn't -- so sorry!), eyeing it warily, and wondering who'd be the first fool brave or stupid enough to try it out. (Again, I really hate to telegraph what's about to happen, but really, that's what we talked about. I can't rewrite history here, people.)

So, of course, the 'expert' who bought the damned thing, and doctored it, and babysat it, was in line to have the honor of the first taste. Really, what else could I do? This barely counts as a stupid decision -- if I hadn't taken a bite, they'd have probably shoved the whole thing down my pants and given me a grainy melon wedgie. And if there's one thing you do not want to endure in this life, folks, it's a grainy melon wedgie.

(Hell, if nothing else, think of the seeds. Those little bastards wriggle their way all up in your bidness. You'll be finding those things in your undies for weeks!)

So, dutifully -- if fearfully -- I took a bite. And tasted nothing but watermelon. It was good. Too good, in fact. We tore through that thing like tornadoes through a trailer park -- the whole thing was gone in ten minutes or so, with just a soggy green hull to prove that there was ever a watermelon there in the first place. Like tipsy Tasmanian Devils, we were.

The next couple of hours are a blur, I'm afraid. I remember having a very good time, and laughing a lot about things that probably weren't all that funny, and leaning on an awful lot of things that probably weren't meant to be leaned on quite so heavily. Eventually, I ended up in a circle of four or five people (possibly less; I really wasn't focusing well at that point), talking about nothing in particular. And finding it hilarious, of course. At some point, I had occasion to make another of my asinine, life-threatening decisions:

Random Guy: 'Hey, (some chick) and (another chick) and (some dude) and I are gonna go over to the Country Club. (Some other chick) works there, and we can hang around and maybe get some more booze. Who's in?'

Well, let's just step back and look at this statement for a minute. I mean, first of all, one thing just has to leap out and grab you by the throat, right? 'Punxsutawney has a country club?!? There's, like, three traffic lights in the whole fricking place. A country club? Dude!'

It took me a second to get over that, mainly because I was trying to avoid saying what I just wrote and offending all these people who presumably lived there. (There was still the watermelon shell to be used for a wedgie, remember. I wasn't out of the woods just yet.)

Once I recovered, though, I thought about the offer. First, I knew no one involved. Second, I wasn't looking for any 'sumthin-sumthin' -- I had a long-distance girlfriend. (And apparently was pretty serious about it, because I married her.) Third... 'Punxsey has a goddamned country club?!?'

(Sorry, sorry... that's just tough to get over. I'll be good now.)

So, third was -- how the hell am I gonna get back? I only know Joe, and he wasn't even around just then. He wouldn't even know I'd left. Hell, he might drive back without me in the morning, if I didn't show up.

Fourth, there was still plenty of booze at the house, and I didn't have room for more, anyway. Fifth, it was just a damned stupid idea -- even these other people who knew the guy were looking at him funny, so obviously nobody was gonna --

Disembodied Voice: 'I'll go.'

'What the? Who the hell was that dumbass who just said... wait a minute. Did I just feel my mouth move a second ago? Holy shit, I didn't say that, did I? Surely to heaven, I couldn't... I wouldn't have --'

MY Disembodied Voice: 'Let's go. Sounds like fun!'

'Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. That damned drunken watermelon's taken over, and is working my mouth. At least it hasn't figured out how to work my legs. So I can just sit -- hey! Whoa! Who the hell told you to start walking, dammit? I demand that you legs turn right around and march to the kitchen. March! March, dammit!

Arms, don't you get involved, dammit! This is not your fight. Don't you reach for that doorknob. Shit! All systems are against me! Eject! Eject!'

And so, I piled in a car with five other people, in god only knows what state of dysfunction, and rode on over to the gleaming, palatial Punxsutawney Country Club, a facility built for kings and queens and burly Norse gods.

Okay, so really, it looked like a funeral home with a better paint job and a bigger parking lot. We went into the 'ballroom' and grabbed some beers. Somewhere around that time, the clock must've struck midnight or something, and the spell wore off, because I finally came to my senses and realized where the hell I was, how freaking ridiculous a situation I'd gotten myself in, and how violently I was going to hurl if I drank any more alcohol. Sweet, sweet, sanity -- where the hell have you been all my life?

So, the story ends with a bit of an anticlimax, I'm afraid. I hung around for an hour or two, chatting with the folks who brought me, nursing my beer, and generally wondering whether I'd see my dingy studio apartment again. But after a while, we all got tired, and they dropped me back at Joe's sometime in the wee hours of the morning. I think the party was still going on in some form or another, but I found my way face-first onto a bed upstairs, and slept through whatever debauchery was still happening below. In the morning -- the late, late morning -- the next day, we got up, shook off the cobwebs, and made our way home.

So, that's my story of personal assheadedness in Punxsutawney, PA. Most of you hit February second, and think of the groundhog, or the weather, or maybe even that Bill Murray movie. Me, I think of hangovers, and country clubs, and watermelon -- oh, that evil, evil watermelon! I'll leave it to you to decide which is more interesting, but I'll tell you -- I was much happier when I could hear about that damned furbag's shadow without wanting to spew liquored-up fruit juice.

In the end, this is yet another holiday horribly tainted by alcohol-related shenanigans. I think I'm down to just a couple of holidays that haven't been completely ruined yet. And I'm working on those. You hear me, Flag Day and Arbor Day? You'd better watch your backs, baby! You're next!