Raining On Their Own Parades

In Norway, we have something called the “russ celebration”. It’s to celebrate when we graduate high school and is generally just a bunch of young adults partying and behaving wildly.

While the celebrations have escalated wildly over the last couple of decades, costing enormous sums of money for decorated vehicles, stereo sets, and going to festivals, one of the longest-running traditions is that the “russ” have to participate in our Seventeenth of May parade; that’s our Constitution Day. That also means that, traditionally, the night before is the biggest party night. For our American readers, this whole thing kind of becomes like spring break and the Fourth of July all rolled up in one.

When I was a “russ”, I wasn’t drinking much; I was one of the people organizing the parties rather than getting hammered all the time. (The legal drinking age in Norway is eighteen.) Some of the guys teased me a bit over this, but I felt like I didn’t really need to be on the sauce all the time. Therefore, while we partied all through the night on the sixteenth of May, I stayed relatively sober while my classmates got drunker and drunker. At this point, some of them really started teasing, saying ironically how much of a shame it was that I had to organize things and leave the drinking to them.

On the morning of the seventeenth, just before the big parade was due to start, most of the guys were hungover, probably still drunk. Then, it occurred to them that in order to drive their special vehicles in the parade, they’d have to be sober!

Suddenly, the light drinker was very much sought-after as I could fulfil the role of stand-in designated driver.