True Giraffe Stories: Snoop-a-Loop

My life is so colorful, so full of exciting tales and adventurous stories, that I often forget some of these events. Today, I had a flashback. I remembered a crazy night from college. I thought I'd share it with you and also forever document it into the internet.

This crazy night took place near the end of my freshman year of college. Be warned—this story does not involve nudity or promiscuousness, but it does involve underage drinking, Mini Snoop Doggy Dog, getting kicked out of three house parties, and two handguns.

This story begins at the U of O Delta Tau Delta (DTD) fraternity house on a Friday night, February 2001. My friend and dorm neighbor, Tyler, belongs to this frat. Think of Tyler as Fred Durst’s beefy twin brother, except with way too many visible tattoos—arms, shoulders, flaming monk on one calf muscle, giant spider on the other. So I’m with Tyler and a couple of his DTD brothers shooting pool, drinking, talking about chicks—what every college freshman does.

Tyler’s DTD brothers are a seedy bunch. Now, I partially associate this with the fact that they occasionally do drugs. And I don’t, never have. Maybe they just smoked pot, maybe more, I don’t know. But the reason I tell you that they did drugs is because I need to explain how we met this next group of fellas.

El (short for Elliot) was a middle school advisor. He helped 6th to 8th graders not only with school problems, but with family and social problems, too. He seemed like a cool guy. Relaxed clothing, dreadlocks. He was in his thirties, but that’s okay. He was a smooth speaker. Got along with everyone. Told stories. Told jokes. He was the social leader of his group of friends. Seemed like a good guy.

He brought two friends with him. One was a tall guy, Ben Wallace-ish, but no ‘fro. I don’t remember much about him. Maybe because I drank too much that night, and he didn’t do anything memorable enough to stick out. The second friend looked EXACTLY like Snoop Dogg, if Snoop Dogg was four-foot-eleven and resided in Eugene. Both were pretty much quiet, but chimed in during laughing and giving someone shit.

Let me just say that these three guys were black and looked borderline normal-borderline thuggish, like they could “turn it on” if they wanted too. I am not racist. I am just explaining a visual observation. We were judged multiple times that night. We crashed a lot of predominantly white, preppy, Eugene parties.

So now you ask, “How did these DTD guys know El and his crew?” Oh, I didn’t mention? El was a drug dealer, and sold pot to these guys. That’s right, advisor to your youngest child by day, selling pot to your oldest child at night. This guy was one heck of a role model.

So we decide to go to some house party up in the hills. We don’t know anyone there, but heard of it though a friend of a friend… We a rolling in one of the DTD’s black BMW sedan, and El’s old school VW van. Cause that’s how WE roll. We finally find this place. Looks small from the street. Looks too quiet to be the bumping party it was hyped to be.

The note on the door reads “Party is downstairs. Come on in, unless you’re the cops.” Alright. Nice. This is the place. Now this house was built on some kind of a vortex on a hill, because it looked like a peaceful 500 sq ft house on the street level, but led into a 1500 sq ft party basement, with a full bar. I mean 360 degree bar. There were more than 100 people. Music turned up loud. Good times. I ran into an architecture friend, Andres, and also Jones. I don’t know what I said, but I remember thinking that I made a fool of myself. I remember Andres motioning the “he’s been drinking” hand signal to Jones.

(Sidenote—earlier on this Friday, I went off on a verbal tirade to these student representatives of this summer “internship” company that had set up shop in the atrium in the EMU. Their “internship” was a semi-pyramid scheme/cult involving selling educational teaching books door-to-door in a city across the country. Also, it’s paid on commission. They wind you in their web, and I’m glad I didn’t get sucked in. Long story short, guess who was hosting this party? One of the two people at the cult that I bitched out, of course.)

So the party is going along fine. People are dancing, drinking, socializing. So Mini-Snoop starts impressing the ladies with his dancing skills. So he’s doing the “Crip Walk” (A dance that you shouldn’t try, Nate. I know you saw them doing it on BET, but seriously, don’t.) And while he’s crip walking, not one, but BOTH of Mini-Snoop’s handguns fall out of his track-jacket pockets!!! (Note—I do not, nor did I at the time, believe these concealed weapons to be registered. They were most likely being carried illegally.)

We left the party. (Got kicked out.)

So where to next? Another friend of a friend’s party. Let’s roll. We hopped in the pimpmobiles and we were off.

Of the next two parties we got kicked out of, I really only remember one of them. It was a snazzy appletini cocktail party, maybe 20 people. Maybe. And we roll in. Fred Durst. Mini-Snoop. Dreadlocks. Ben Wallace. And three or four white guys (me and the other DTDs). One of the DTDs knows ONE of the preppy people.

Now some of these people looked scared of us. We did not fit in. We left the party shortly. (Got kicked out.)

So now it’s been three parties we’ve gotten kicked out, only one for gun possession, although he still concealed the guns the whole night. Three and out, what are we to do at 1am on a Friday night? Beer run at Safeway!!! How logical. We roll. Now the only people of legal age are El, Snoop, and Ben Wallace, so they’ll have to buy.

Progressively through the night, my judgment returned slowly:

“Where are we going with these sketchy white guys AND sketchy black guys?...”
“Oh shit, that’s a gun! What should I do? If I leave, how will I get home? Well, at least it didn’t go off when he dropped the gun, or the other gun…”
“Hmm, we keep getting kicked out of parties. And I NEVER get kicked out of parties. I wonder why tonight is so different…”
“How sober is the guy driving this old VW van? And when the buckle doesn’t work, does wrapping around and sitting on the belt really work…”
“I need to get out of this car and away from these sketchy guys before we all get arrested! NOW!”

So when we stopped at Safeway, I waited for El’s crew to go inside, and then I made up some “tired” or “too drunk” excuse. They offered to drop me off, but I didn’t even respond. I just walked out of the parking lot, at least a mile, to get home. What a sobering walk…

So… Lessons learned?
1. Stop hanging out with Delta Tau Delta brothers, even if they are Tyler’s friends.
2. Stop hanging out with dreadlocked drug dealers, even if they are nice and their friends are miniaturized versions of famous rappers and basketball players.
3. Don’t drink and drive or be a passenger in a similar situation.
4. Don’t drop your gun while crip walking, or any other dance for that matter.
5. When your child is in school, pay for private therapy; do not use the school’s counselor.