It’s currently 10:21 am and you wake up to the sound of Joey Chestnut devouring an ungodly amount of hot dogs on live television. While your boys sweat out their over 71.5 total hot dogs consumed bet, you scour the lakehouse you’re staying at for any kind of pain medication to relieve your excruciating hangover. The only thing you can find is expired Tums and Neosporin, neither of which are going to fix the brutal headache that has been slowly building up over the past three days of heavy drinking. So, rather than listen to your internal organs that are screaming out for any sort of hydration, you continue the bender with an ice-cold Bud Light Coors Light in hopes that your hangover will be cured by the time you’re three beers deep.
Once the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest wraps up – the over didn’t hit, by the way – you and the fellas head out on the boat with nothing but booze, a couple of bags of chips, and a speaker (which is all you really need). Your previous plans of picking up chicks at the sandbar quickly turn into ripping giant donuts while tubing all over the lake. I mean, why waste time trying to chat up a girl you might never see again when you could be flying off of an inflatable tube at dangerously fast speeds? You can feel the cheap sunscreen wearing off every passing minute on the boat, but reapplying seems like too much work while celebrating America’s birthday. After all, Abraham Lincoln didn’t free us from England in 1776 while wearing Banana Boat Sport (that may or may not be historically accurate).
Before you can even realize it, you’ve been on the boat for seven hours and it’s time to head back to shore for dinner. Once you get back to the lake house, the sun burn that’s covering your entire body begins to hinder your movement, but you’re drunk enough where the pain still bearable. After throwing on your least-dirty shirt, you fire up the old charcoal grill that probably shouldn’t be within fifty yards of any sort of wood and throw on some burgers and dogs. The thought of eating a hot dog after watching the atrocities of Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest earlier in the day make you want to throw up more than a warm tequila shot, so you plan on doubling up on the cheeseburgers when you make your plate. Inevitably, the old rickety grill chars pretty much every piece of meat you had on it, but everyone’s too hungry to care.
Once you and the boys finish all the burgers and dogs – as well as the second thirty rack of the day – you get ready to head back out on the lake to watch some fireworks. In any other setting, fireworks and country music would likely make you cringe harder than watching someone unironically wear a fedora, but you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else on the Fourth of July. After a little while, you find the perfect spot to sit back and watch the way-too-elaborate fireworks show whilst getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.
Right after the fireworks finish, you end the night sitting around the fire with the boys, slowly falling asleep one by one. Sure, you might have to go to work early the next morning, but America only has one birthday every year so your boss will certainly understand you showing up hungover. Even if you get fired, you wouldn’t trade this Fourth of July with the boys for anything in the world.
