THURSDAY, Dec. 1 — Ben Munce
With about 15 minutes left of Ben Munce's 21st birthday, a tag team of vivacious young ladies finally dragged him out onto the dance floor.
"Who's the big winner tonight?" Munce shouted to more than a dozen of his friends situated among half-empty pitchers and overturned shot glasses in a corner of Rick's American Café.
"He's like a 2-year-old," said a his friend Mike Loveless, 21, of Clarkston. "He's so happy right now."
Munce spent his birthday night mingling with friends and downing a variety of shots, from Jägermeister to Prairie Fire, a mixture of tequila and Tabasco sauce. As the night continued and Munce progressed further into drunkeness, more and more people came to wish him a happy birthday. Many of the women offered a congratulatory kiss on his smooth, bald head.
"You know that one guy that knows everybody?" said his friend Darko Stojanovski, a political science junior. "That's this guy. He's friends with everyone."
The night started in Munce's Cedar Village apartment, where he kept his DTN-issued pitcher filled with beer from a keg resting in the corner of the living room. Munce had visited Rick's after midnight the night before, and a stack of free passes to the night club now rested on his kitchen counter, an incentive the bar offers to those who celebrate responsibly on their 21st birthday.
After a long trek across icy sidewalks, Munce and his friends returned to Rick's. Munce, never relinquishing his smile, posed in pictures and laughed with his friends until late in the night.
"I did it," Munce shouted in mock enthusiasm. "I finally did it. I'm 21."
The alcohol eventually caught up with Munce. The night ended in the hallway outside of his apartment, where his friends found him passed out and by himself at 2 a.m., covered in his own blood. Munce said in an e-mail that he left the bar sometime after 1 a.m., but doesn't remember what happened.
"Apparently I thought it would be a good idea to a punch a fire alarm glass thing and so that's what happened with the blood," Munce said.
