John Mulaney
The One Thing You Can’t Replace
[Verse]
Another story I heard about myself, this one happened in high school. We had this teacher in high school whose kid went to our high school. His name was Mr. McNamara and his son Jake McNamara went to our high school. He was a sophomore, when I was a senior. So he was two years behind me. And Mr. McNamara was an asshole and one weekend he and his wife decided to leave town, which you should never do, if you're an asshole. And Jake McNamara decided to throw a party at the teacher's house. Hooray! And everyone around town heard about it and we all got up individually and thought, "Okay, let's go over there and destroy the place." I walked into this party. Everyone I had ever met was there and everyone was drinking like it was the end of the world. People were drinking like it was the Civil War and a doctor was coming to saw our legs off. It was totally unsupervised. We were like dogs without horses, we were running wild. I walked down, I walked down to the basement. They had a pool table in the basement. One dude took a running start and threw his body onto the pool table and broke it in half. Another kid found out which room was Mr. McNamara's and went upstairs and took a shit on his computer. So the party was going great.

I'm standing in the basement, and I'm holding a red cup; you've seen movies. And I'm standing there and I'm holding a red cup and I'm starting to black out and I guess someone said like "Something, something police" and in a brilliant moment of word association, I yelled: "Fuck da police! Fuck da police!" And everyone else joined in. A hundred drunk white children yelling “Fuck da police”. With the confidence of guys who have already been to jail and aren't afraid of it anymore, you know that like, "I'll serve my nickel, you come and take me!" confidence. But white children. The reason someone had said something, something police was because the police were there. So a Chicago police officer walked down the stairs and got to the bottom in the basement and looked out over a sea of drunk toddlers yelling; "Fuck the police!" in his face, but he was almost impressed.

He was like "Wow," and then he leaned into his walkie-talkie and went "Get the paddy-wagon." And my friend John, who is now a father, this man now has a baby, he grabbed a 40, smashed it on the ground, and yelled "Scatter!" And everyone ran into different directions. We all ran in different directions. It was like that scene in Ratatouille when the humans come in the kitchen and all the rats go in different ways. We all ran in different directions. I ran into the laundry room and I jumped up on the washing machine and I crawled out through a window into the backyard and now I'm running through the backyard and there was this big chain link fence and I thought "I've never climbed a fence that high before." And then I woke up at home.

On Monday, I went to school because that's what we did back then. And I'm walking into the school building and who do I see but Jake McNamara. And he says to me, "Hey, were you at my party on Saturday?" And I said "No," you know, like a liar. And he said "Things got really outta hand. Someone broke the pool table. Someone took a shit on my dad's computer. But the worst thing," he says; "the worst thing is that someone stole these old antique photos of my grandmother and my parents are freaking out about it."

And I had that thought that only blackout drunks and Steve Urkel can have, "Did I do that?" I figured no. I wouldn't have done that. But I was never sure, until two years later, relax. I'm playing video games with this kid named Alex that we also went to high school with. Two years later, we've graduated by now. We're playing video games for a couple hours, and then Alex says to me, "Hey, come here I want to show you something," and he takes me into his bedroom and then he takes me into a side room off of his bedroom. Never a good thing to have. He shows me a tiny room that is covered wall to wall in stolen antique photos from different people's parties over the years. And I said "Why? Why do you do this?" And Alex said, "Because it's the one thing you can't replace." That's the end of that story, but how fucked up is that, right? That's crazy. So I don't drink anymore.