Every year, on the first weekend in May, about 50 college friends and I converge on Pond Eddy, NY for our annual Canoe Trip. This is a weekend where men can be men and your daily lives and responsibilities can be forgotten until Monday. The theme of the weekend: drunken recklessness. Mandatory items include multiple 30 packs of your favorite beer, plenty of meat for grilling, assorted fireworks and anything else you wouldn’t mind being broken, burned, waterlogged or otherwise destroyed. Clean clothes, hygienic products and sleeping arrangements are all considered optional. Girlfriends, wives and any means of contacting the outside world are strictly forbidden.

A great example of these unwritten rules being enforced with ‘Canoe Trip Justice’ occurred last year. One absent-minded attendee forgot the first rule of Canoe Trip and arrived sporting a metrosexual white turtleneck sweater. Last I checked we were in the middle of the woods, not a lounge in SoHo. So, he was given an ultimatum: burn the sweater or— well that was really the only choice he was given (real men don’t negotiate). He, of course, complied by tossing the insult to manliness into the roaring fire and cracking open a beer. Shirtless and drinking within minutes of arrival, this man was ready for Canoe Trip.

As the fabled weekend quickly approaches, my friends and I often share stories and fond memories from years past. The stories are so abundant that hours can pass as we each share our favorite hazy recollections. Due to the nature of the event, bringing expensive devices such as cameras to document the events is a rarity. Fortunately enough, one story will forever be documented thanks to the handy camerawork of one attendee.

Allow me to preface this story with some important background information. The firework-of-choice in recent years has been the ‘Whistling Charlie’. Unlike your usual firework display, ‘Charlie’ offers none of the typical explosions of color in the night sky. Rather, it emits a 90 second long, ear piercing whistling sound accompanied by clouds of billowing smoke. These have gained popularity due to their unarguable ability to wake up those unfortunate enough to have passed out around the campfire. As is the case at any get together, a premature pass-out is strongly frowned upon, carrying the consequence of humiliation, and possibly second-degree burns. Last year, Danimal was the unfortunate recipient of ‘Charlie’.

The following video is titled ‘Danimal Meets Whistling Charlie’:

Although the commotion awoke me from my own slumber in a nearby tent, the high-pitched sound is about as uncommon as birds chirping at Canoe Trip, so I thought nothing of it. Kelly (the person lighting ‘Charlie’) filled me in on the scenario the next morning. His paraphrased story goes like this:

In common fashion, Danimal passed out in the open, begging for the misfortune that followed. Kelly positioned the flaming wakeup call directly under Danimal’s chair, assuring a successful wakeup. As the smoke began to overwhelm Danimal’s drunken senses, he awoke and looked at Kelly like a deer caught in headlights. Still severely intoxicated, Danimal leapt from his smoky sanctuary and proceeded to immediately lose his balance and fall directly into the still-burning campfire. To this day I still curse that green chair for blocking the shot.

Amazingly enough, no Danimal’s were injured in the filming of this video.