Curb Your Enthusiasm

It was in Muskogee, Oklahoma that I attended my first "Curb Party". This celebration involves three to twelve young men and a case of beer. The first thing you do is go out and buy the beer, the cheaper the better. My first time on the curb, we drank Busch. Aside from the fact that it was just about ten bucks a case, it also had the amusing double entendre name that only became more amusing as the evening wore on. After the beer was selected, then the proper curb had to be chosen.
How do you know when you find a good curb? First of all, it needs to be a proper curb, with ninety degree angles - not one of those shallow sloping deals that might be mistaken for a driveway. Then one must consider the neighborhood. A quiet residential spot would do nicely, unless the neighbors are the uppity sort who discourage gatherings of post-adolescent males swilling cheap beer. Another thing to keep in mind is lighting. Camping out directly beneath a streetlight is just asking for trouble, but trying to find your keys in the glare of headlights can also cause unnecessary stress.
Back in the neolithic times when I was hanging out on the curb, we were all creeping toward our junior year in college. This gave us carte blanche to be sophomoric. We thought of a dozen different places we could go instead of the curb, but the gravity only increased as the night wore on. We had big plans about checking out the Batfish submarine, or driving over to see if any of the girls came back from Norman that weekend. But mostly we sat there and made drunken promises to each other and told the same bad joke half a dozen different ways. The only movement we managed was to stumble far enough away, always downhill, to relieve ourselves (another intentional feature of the ninety degree curb: no splashback).
The party was over when the beer was gone. We packed up our empties and headed home, some of us walking and others taking the riskier trip in the Dyno-Buick. We went home and slept it off. The next night, we might do it all over again. We were young then, and there were plenty of curbs.