Youth gone…and now wild

It could have been any Wednesday night, but it wasn’t. Because it’s not every Wednesday night that a bachelor party rolls through. Maybe every third Wednesday, but that really doesn’t make my point now does it? Whatever the case, this night was going to be special, and as I soon learned, not just for them.

“We’ll have five shots of Scotch,” said the ringleader of the band of bachelors.

Shots of Scotch? Evidently discerning judgment was no longer a factor.

“What kind of Scotch?”

He wasn’t listening because he was too busy high-fiving his buddy, the one with an upturned backwards golf visor.

“What kind of Scotch,” I asked again.

“Whatever.”

“That will be $98,” I said, five “whatevers” later.

Scotch like Cognac or Champagne should never be ordered “whatever” because that whatever can easily be $20 a pop.

But then, bachelor parties are not known for good judgment. Take one part fear of commitment, one part youth and inexperience, add alcohol and often you end up with bad behavior. However these guys were no spring chickens. Second marriage perhaps? Perhaps even a third, who knows? I got the strong feeling that they subscribed to the theory, “I’m great at relationships, because I’ve had a million of them.”

Oddly enough, and contrary to their stated goals, ladies nights and bachelor parties always seem to attract the interest of the opposite sex.

Two said members took immediate notice.

“We’ll have two more cosmopolitans,” said that group’s ringleader shaking her bangled forearm for dramatic effect. For every dysfunction there is always an enabler.

“Let’s do them as body shots,” squealed her friend.

Not being sure how to “do” body shots, I just made two cosmopolitans. It didn’t seem to matter. Sometimes the “saying” of something trumps the actual “doing” of it.

The bachelor party boys didn’t seem to notice.

Time for the ladies to up the ante.

“Let’s kiss,” said Ms. Ringleader announced to her friend.

Five minutes of primping, preening and posing, and a kiss was finally forthcoming.

It was a peck to be sure, but a peck between ladies is usually an attention-getter.

Unusually no attention was forthcoming. The bachelor party continued the frat-boy antics, albeit with reading glasses, medic alert bracelets and platinum credit cards.

Ms. Ringleader now took things to a whole new level. Five more minutes of preparation was followed by the grabbing of her friend by the back of her head and engaging in the most vicious bout of intergender tonsil hockey I have ever seen. Having witnessed many a public display of affection, that is saying a lot. However unlike most passionate embraces, these women’s eyes were wide open and looking not at their proxy paramours, but at the group of middle-aged bachelors. What the kiss lack in genuineness, however, it made up for in volume and flailing, even bending one of their large silver hoop earrings in the process.

The boys, however, couldn’t have cared less.

Out came the girl’s camera phones. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, someone most certainly has said.

Another wide-eyed make-out session was duplicated and immortalized digitally, sure to be available on social media shortly.

Again, it didn’t matter.

“Look what we just did,” the friend said, attempting to show the footage to any of the bachelor party who would listen or look.

None did.

Sometimes one person’s high point can be another’s low.

Frustrated, the two women requested their bill of fare.

“Do you offer senior discounts?” they asked.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• There are some behaviors that are sexy at 20 years old, silly at 30 years old, strange at 40 years old and just plain sad at 50 years old.

• The spring chicken is a real thing, also known as a Cornish game hen or poussin. It is a young bird with a large full breast, causing a high ratio of white to dark meat.

• “It’s good to be middle-aged, things don’t matter so much, you don’t take it so hard when things happen to you that you don’t like,” the famously middle-aged Eleanor Roosevelt once said.

“Forty is the old age of youth, 50 is the youth of old age,” Universalist clergyman Hosea Ballou opined.

“F— you Ballou,” this quadragenarian columnist says.