Statesboro, where there is a movie theater, to see Wedding Crashers. This just also happens to be the town of Georgia Southern University, as well as a few popular “bars” or “clubs” or whatever everyone is calling them these days. I, unlike many of my friends, had never been to one.

After the movie, my friend and I decide that we would go to one of these “bars”/”clubs”, and we chose the Wooden Nikel. You have to be 18 to get in, but I look 19 or so and they rarely check IDs, so I just walked up, paid, and they let me inside. It was only around 10:30, so it wasn’t full at all, but there was still a nice crowd. Keep in mind that I have no idea what the crowd should be like, as this was my first time at any bar, except for Wild Wings on Spring Break, which doesn’t really count.

Some of the people were a little friendly, some were very mean. This one girl came up and talked to me. She said, “You look familiar, what’s your name?” I told her, and we talked for a minute, and then we parted ways. It turned out that she was a girl that had been leaving me comments on myspace and she is actually pretty cool, but we didn’t figure that out until the next day when we both logged on myspace. What are the chances of meeting a myspace friend at a random bar out of town?

While all of this was taking place, my friend that had come with me was loading up on $4 shots, and he even bought some for these two girls that we know from our high school that were there. We bought $1 tube shots from this one chick and he gave her a $5 tip. It’s 15% gratuity, not 500%! I told him to quit drinking, but he wouldn’t listen, and I eventually lost him in the crowd that was gathering. I know I had never been to a bar before, but when you can’t take one step in any direction at any point of the bar without bumping into somebody, you know it is packed.

Even though the place was packed, there was a guy with leg problems that was walking around with a walker. Nobody picked on him, and everybody got out of his way. From the way it looked, I think he was a regular and the bouncers stuck up for him.

What are the bouncers at these places on? There was one bouncer who was about 6’5” and must have been at least 240 pounds of solid muscle. He could have easily broken me in half twice. And if you’ve ever tried to break something in half twice, you know it’s a lot harder the second time when you’re making the small break. Does that make sense? Probably not. But these guys all looked like they could be in the World’s Strongest Man Competition and at least beat out England. England just doesn’t produce very massive men.

I gave up finding my friend for a while, and these two girls came and talked to me. They were sophomores in college, so of course I said I was a freshman there. I had to give them my friend’s information when they questioned me (classes, dorm, etc.) because, still being in high school, I knew nothing about any of that stuff. These girls danced with me and invited me back to their place to hang out when we left. They were awesome, but I saw that it was 12:15. I had to be home at 1:00, since I do have a high school curfew.

I got the girls’ numbers, found my friend out on the dance floor barely able to walk, and grabbed his keys. I, being completely sober (one shot all night), guided him to his truck and then got in. I drove back home listening to my passenger’s drunk ramblings and got to the house at like 12:58. I had accomplished my first night at the bar, and still got home before curfew. In the days to come, when I am out at the bars a few nights a week, I will never forget this first experience. Actually, I will probably forget it in a week or two, but hey, I had fun.