Dodging Multiple Bullets At Once

When I was in college, one of the frats bragged about their new huge deck. They threw a party to celebrate its construction. As a woman, there was no cover charge for me to participate. There was dancing on the deck, there was a large sound system, and they cooked all sorts of meat on a massive grill. Someone had even set up an above-ground swimming pool on the deck.

I grabbed a drink and eventually stepped away from it to go to the bathroom. I returned to it, drank it… and quickly started feeling weird. I crawled out of the party, curled up under a parked car, and went to sleep.

When I woke up, it was morning, and where the deck used to be was a massive mess. I later read in the news that the deck had been overloaded and collapsed. Many people were injured; some had even caught fire when the grill had broken as part of the collapse.

The police had arrested almost everyone involved, including the injured folks, for permit violations, underage drinking, noise violations, loading the deck beyond capacity — whatever excuses they could find to throw someone in the tank. But they had missed me, curled up under the car as I was.

I never again stepped onto a deck without asking about its structural capacity, and I never again drank a drink I had left unattended.