Written by Tim Rigg
We’ve all been there. One minute you’re classy as hell – flute full-o-bubbly and chi-chi nibbles with friends, family or co-workers. Over the course of the evening, your Dr Jekyll becomes a modern Hyde – you’ve transformed into a Nick Nolte mugshot. That’s right – you’ve Robert Downey Junior’d in reverse (#JDR). Or worse, find yourself staring at the middle finger thrust in your manager’s mug wondering “who could be so stupid” for a full 30 seconds before you realise that accusatory digit belongs to you. Stupid, drunk, office-party you. Tomorrow you is gonna hate you. Tomorrow you is going to cringe. Welcome to Christmas in Australia.
Other countries have traditions like “Vee open vun present per day vor twelf day!”. In the land of Aus we have “at least I made it to the dunny”. Oh yes, the silly season is quite aptly named, and it’s time to count down our top 10 Christmas regrets – brought to you by regrettable beverage choices and the red-hot fear from tomorrow morning.
#10: The lost phone
“It was hacked” is one of my favourite celebrity lies – it’s up there with “Meryl Streep was just so lovely!”.. What’s better is that people believe it. It’s like if you kept say, an extremely brittle glass jar full of hornets in your pantry, and then one day there were hornets everywhere, and you tried to convince everyone that someone broke into your home and freed all the hornets (say “hornets” out loud a few times – it’s pretty hornet) – but that’s not what happened at all. What actually happened is you slammed about a gazillion jager-things and either dropped the jar or lent it to a kid with a twitch and now there’s pictures of your nude hornet everywhere.
Lost phones everywhere, thanks to majority sponsor Bubbly.
#9: The Boss Showdown – Joo wanna no wat I reeeeally think?
You know that frustrated email you wrote to Jenny a couple months ago? The vitriolic, rage-filled tantrum fantasy about your boss – how “the company’s never going to succeed with a wad like him running the show” – yeah – that one. Well lucky for you, you memorised it (probably while reading it over & OVER again). Not so lucky that for decades to come, also tattooed to your brain will be what it looked like as you delivered it in person, slurred-for-slurred to their face at the Chrissy party. Can anyone say “salary cap.”?
Boss showdowns – brought to you almost exclusively by brown liquors.
#8: The Elaine
‘nuf said.
#7: The Throw-up
Last December I was on a train from the City to The Shire, and that baby was packed. I was sat next to this dude who’d clearly been at a Christmas party, and whose true condition revealed itself slowly – disturbingly, like a Lohan. At first he just looked a little distressed, but he reeked of booze. I saw him shuffling around uncomfortably and that’s when I made my move (my spewey-sense was tingling). If I was a better person I would’ve warned the fellow passengers about what I knew was sure to come, but I’m not, and they no doubt would not have heard my cries over the squawking they made as they clambered for my seat. Due to the amount of passengers I didn’t get far but I was outside the blast radius as he erupted. Funny thing was, he tried to puke into an mX newspaper, which acted as a kind of puke ramp. It was magnificent and awful.
Moral of the story is, that guy had a civic responsibility to get off that train the second he knew what was going down. Now I don’t know whether he was a nice guy or not, but being that drunk invariably makes you an A-hole who couldn’t care less about the others around them. It’s never pretty and it often stinks.
Public puke-ramps more often than not the product of Tequila.
#6: The lost wallet
I lost my wallet once when I was 15 – I lost about 1500 Timezone credits and it almost destroyed me (I wasn’t that into Timezone, but there was a guy there called “Anis” – it was on his badge and everything. I was drawn to him. Him and Ridge Racer). I shudder to think what would happen these days, what with pay-waving microlibrary bitcoin minecraft memberships and what-not.
Lost wallets proudly brought to you by beer.
#5: That social post
A chick I know once posted at around 2am: “anybone down tonight – im Sydney” (editor’s choice – I amended from Sybney for the sake of communication). That was fine, but she followed it up with “get it, BONE”. Random hookups through social are fine – being so drunk that you think you need to explain your rancid wordplay is just plain unforgivable.
Creation of, and subsequent reveling in the cleverness of not-at-all clever social posts almost entirely the fault of red, red wine.
#4: The Empty Pockets
This one year, I had to buy all my nieces & nephews their christmas presents from the 2 dollar shop – true story. It wasn’t so bad, Milo quite enjoyed his miniature spanner set. In 6 years, when he’s 8, I’m sure they’ll go to good use.
We’ve all done it – a few drinks turns into a few more, then a few more and suddenly December is one long party with a pretty serious tab at the end, and suddenly it’s a very home-made Christmas. And let’s face it – drinking in Australia isn’t cheap, and the holidays are no time to the be skint.
Best drink to whittle away baby Milo’s Christmas fund? Cocktails.
#3: The Binguries
2 bruised knees? Check.
Shiner? Check.
Twisted ankle?
No clue how this happened? Check
Disapproving look from your parents Christmas Day? Check.
Binguries brought to you by god knows what.
#2: That Joke
Why did Aunt Carol cross the road? Because you told that joke. You know the one. There are two vaults in our noggins – there’s one that holds necessary information, emotions, social pleasantries & civil behaviour etc. The other contains a decaying pool of sailor-mouthed demons wearing nothing but t-shirts that say “My other shirt is your mother”. This is the vault that joke came from. This vault makes Aunt Carol cry.
This vault can only be unlocked with rum.
Drumroll please!!!!! It’s time for Christmas regret numero uno:
#1: The Hook-up
There are countless regretful drunk hook-ups, but in the interests of time let’s just look at the top two from the holidays.
Regretful hook-up 1: The Uggo
Now before you think I’m superficial, I could be talking about the ugliness of the soul. I’m really not, but shame on you for not recognising it as an option. Beauty is subjective – painfully evidenced by the fact that drunk you and sober you both have extremely different opinions on unibrows and hair that smells like milk.
The uggo will haunt your dreams for eternity – a little reminder of why they say 2 Long Island Iced Teas is plenty.
Regretful hook-up 2: The “have to see this person on a regular basis, most probably the office”.
Otherwise known as “The Unpleasantness”. For bonus points, the Unpleasantness will almost certainly assume that you’re dating and invite you to 2 non-consecutive cat funerals.
My personal favourite is the combo – the hook-up with an uggo from your office. This scenario degrades terribly over time – we simply refer to it as a “Frankie Muniz”. Best way to pull a Frankie Muniz? Schnapps & white wine.
So there you have it – our top 10 list of Chrissy regrets. If you’ve seen your fair share, and maybe feel like a break from the shenanigans, why not sign up? No big whoop.
Tim Rigg is an HSMer and Director of And Sydney, good friends of Hello Sunday Morning.
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