How to party off the grid

My 20-year-old son recently announced his desire to get "off of the grid" and free himself of the "shackles of petroleum-based lifestyle." Because that's the kind of kid he is.

Fast forward to last night. 11:45 p.m., I am in the car coming home from happy hour with Miss Burrows, laughing and talking and generally making merry. I get the call from Tim referenced here. He's freaking outraged. Which is SO RARE. I mean seriously. My husband does not yell, he is Mr. Calm to the point that sometimes I provoke him just to try to get him going.

So he's having a melt down on the phone because he took Erinna to a movie, got home at 11:45 and Taylor has some "shifty looking" friend over, which is not allowed, and they are both acting like they got totally busted, just very guilty and uncomfortable. They announce they're getting ready to "go out" (at 11:45 mind you) and Mr. Shifty has to go back into Taylor's room to "get his backpack," which inexplicably takes five minutes, and Tim is just losing his shit because he is 100% certain that Taylor was buying pot from this "friend" who we have never seen before. In the midst of protesting his innocence, Taylor drops his backpack, and out falls this.

And multiple rules are being broken here. No. 1, no friends in the house after 11:00 p.m. No. 2, no coming and going after 11 p.m. No. 3, no underage drinking in my house. No. 4, no friends that look shifty. OK. That last one is kind of an unspoken rule, but still.

While Tim is telling me about this shifty kid in the house, Taylor is calling and beeping in to tell me he has no idea why Tim is so upset and, gosh, mom, I don't know what I did wrong, yada yada yada. And takes off because he's "too scared" to stay in the house tonight. And starts weaving his big web of bullshit, which is the root of the entire problem. His inability to just own up to what he's done and be done with it.

I'm still not sold on the fact that Mr. Shifty is just a "kid I hang out with." But I do believe the part of the story where the bottle of whiskey was from a New Years Eve party that he went to. And the reason it's in his backpack, all washed out?

He took it from the party to recycle it, because they were just going to throw it in the trash.

He's sneaky enough to get away with the drinking at a party, and gets busted bringing the washed out bottle home to recycle.

Sometimes, with this kid, I do not know if I should laugh or cry.

I am assuming that when he lives "off the grid," he'll be distilling his own home brew moonshine.