So: It was Friday morning - 1 a.m.
     Less than 48 hours ago - and a scant 16 hours before my unfortunate encounter with Demon Beer. 
     I was on my way out to the garage to deposit a fresh load of cat poo in our NEW green Waste Management container, so my heart was already racing. 
     Suddenly, there it was - a big brown swirling mass of confusion along the middle of my back walk.  At first I thought I knew exactly what it was - then I remembered that all the Republican candidates for president were in Iowa for the straw poll there.  Then reality dawned on me in the bright glare of our back yard light:
     Ants.  The same ants that I'd been watching for days, only now so thick that almost a square foot of the sidewalk couldn't be seen.
     Wow, I thought, forgetting for a moment that I had cat poo to attend to.
     I rushed to the garage, then rushed back.
     Yep, I nodded, pleased with my powers of observation.  Ants.
     Little red ants, we call them in Ohio - though they really aren't very red.  Really more brown than red, I guess.  Hard to say, since I never think to take a color wheel with me when I'm running the cat poo out. 
     Anyway, many of the ants were swarming over the potato chip I had left out for them earlier in the day.  This pleased me, as I would have hated to think that the effort I'd expended in opening the bag, choosing a chip, and tossing it out the back door had been wasted.
     I stood for a moment, just taking it all in.  Ants.  Chip.  Chip.  Ants.  Ants.  Ants.  Chip.  Ants.  No - chip again.  Then ants.  Then ants, chip, chip, chip, ants, chip, wife yelling to get my ass inside, ants, ants, chip, sudden darkness.
     I went back inside and slipped into bed, having done my part to make the world a better place for cat, ant, and wife alike.
     Then 1:30 a.m. came - and with it came The Storm.
     Lightning. 
     Thunder.
     Rain.
     I lay in bed, thinking of ants.  Wondering what ants do when it rains hard.  Wondering where they go to avoid trillions of water droplets, each of which is several times bigger and heavier than a single average ant, let alone one those on a SlimFast diet . 
     I once figured out that for a city the size of Toledo (roughly 800 very square miles), a trillion raindrops fall per second when it rains moderately.  In fact, this inspired my college motto: "I believe that for every drop of rain that falls, an ant drowns."  Hey, it was my High Kafkaesque period - what can I say?
     Suffice it to say that even though I've become a much more optimistic person since college and now believe that it takes at least two raindrops high off Natural Born Killers to drown a single innocent ant, I didn't manage to fall asleep until the last drop had dripped from the gutter outside my window at 3:12 a.m. yesterday morning ....

     By the time I'd managed to roll out of bed and check on the state of my potato chip around 11 a.m., few signs of the previous night's events remained.  The sky was blue, the sun was positively sunny, and the only obvious water around was the 0.8 inches in my rain gauge.  The potato chip was mostly still there on the sidewalk where'd I'd left it, only bleached a hideous white color.  At first a chill ran through me as I thought that I might be dealing with vampire ants - undead ants - ants that sucked the living artificial color from those fried and salted vegetables stupid enough to venture out at night! - but then I saw a few in the harsh light of the sun. 
     They had survived! 
     My friends had survived!!! 
     Somehow, somewhere they had made it through the worst of nights and were now going about their business exactly as before!!  Maybe much fewer in numbers than at 1 a.m., maybe more like postal clerks on Valium and less like parents racing to turn off "Barney" before their napping child hears the first few notes of the opening song, but still - they had survived!! YAY!!
     If only I had successfully resisted the impulse to the embrace the survivors in my joy.
     If only I hadn't broken into quite such an exuberant happy dance....

     So: Now you know why I was drinking last night.
     Now you know why I had gone to a place where they were actually playing that old rock and roll - live.
     Thank goodness the band sounded more like Herbie Hancock and less like Adam and the... and the Ants.
     Thank goodness their amplifiers drowned out the tell tale beating of the ant hearts I had buried under the floorboards of my home.
     Too bad my guilty conscience remained, forcing me to self-flagellate myself by guzzling evil brew while watching really old guys dance with underage girls....

     But that's all behind me now.  I've paid my debt to society by putting my lips fully and completely to the rim of my wife's cup of Budweiser.  My friends tried to talk me out of it - my wife did her best to slap me away - I'm sure Gerald Ford would have granted me a full and complete pardon, had I only asked - but I plunged ahead, and now I'm free of the guilt, secure in the knowledge that as bad as it must be to be crushed to death by a giant dancing oaf's slippered heel, it ain't nothing compared to five full sips of Bud.

     By rights I should have started my new life today, but what the hell - it's a Saturday. 
     Sunday morning, 12:01 a.m. sharp, is soon enough for the likes of me.
     May my new life enjoy its final hour or so of alone time....