Long Live The Friday Afternoon Drinking Club

Old_Ironsides8 years ago

I lost my left incisor on a Friday in April. The fourth drunkest I have been in my short existence, I was attempting to show a pledge the proper way to Gargoyle on a keg shell (the kid was incredibly inflexible). While I flapped my arms like a deranged drunkard, the keg shell, which was near empty at the time, tipped under my weight. As I was too blitzed out of my senses to perceive my sudden momentum increase, my very vulnerable and unprotected face met the ground with an audible crack. Once I stopped snickering like a lunatic, I lifted myself off the floor to find blood leaking from the sudden gap in my smile. I quickly grabbed one of the dirty towels we were using to collect spilled beer from the ground and stuffed it into my mouth in an attempt to stall the bleeding. 



Though my speech was muffled by my makeshift mouth gauze, I managed to order the pledge I had been attempting to educate in medieval architecture to drive me to the dentist in order to have the tooth reattached (fun fact: keep a lost tooth moist with milk, not water; milk preserves the root more effectively). Unfortunately, by the time we’d reached the dentist, my tooth was long gone. The root had sustained too much damage in the fall and it was impossible to re-insert it into my mouth. As if looking like Stu from The Hangover wasn’t excruciating enough, I was subjected to extensive root canal drilling and fitted for a crown, neither of which were particularly pleasant experiences.



All that shit aside, I have no cause to be disappointed. My tooth was a necessary sacrifice to one of the greatest traditions in the entirety of Greek life: the Friday Afternoon Drinking Club. An incredible custom as old as fraternities themselves, FADC seamlessly joins the relaxing ease of day drinking with the social budget of formally endorsed organized activities. The perfect weekly brotherhood experience, the Friday Afternoon Drinking Club’s genius lies in its simplicity: it boils down to guys getting piss drunk together, and all that is required to perform the ceremony is a location and (house-sponsored) kegs of beer. It is not just a celebration of another week passing, but also an opportunity to pre-empt the nightly trip to the local crash bar with some midday festivities. It is, in my opinion, the perfect event. 


Well, it has come to my attention that quite a few fraternity chapters have not renewed their memberships in the club and have cut FADC from their event list. That is a huge fucking mistake. FADC is a hallmark of a simpler era in Greek history; when motherfuckers got together and drank until they lost some teeth just because they had time to kill on a Friday. It is reminiscent of a time when fraternities weren’t under constant threat of excommunication, and the Greek system as a whole was not viewed as some sort of elitist cancer on society. See, FADC is an instance of fraternity life at its best; just a group of guys drinking to make memories. That is what makes FADC so powerful– the Friday Afternoon Drinking Club is an event where the true bonds of a brotherhood are formed.



Every time I bite into a sandwich, I am reminded of that sun-soaked Friday in April, when teaching some dumbass pledge how to Gargoyle cost me a little more than just an embarrassing Snapchat video. That’s what the Friday Afternoon Drinking club is: an opportunity to get a little fucked up and make some lasting memories. That is the reason that the tradition of FADC must go on, so that we can all share in its legacy and we can keep that part of the fraternity spirit alive for at least a little longer..