The Stag Do Generation Game – Part Two
Best man articles — By ollylucan on April 28, 2012 2:36 pmIn our second installment of The Stag Do Generation Game we ask – should you risk taking along younger bothers or cousins to the stag do? Often not a problem as usually they are of a roughly similar age. But sometimes you could have a 15 or 16-year-old teenager on your hands, which if anything is more tricky.
While older folk may feel out of place they will want to mix, whereas many teens are at best awkward and at worse sulky. The one advantage you have is (however uncool your group) the youngsters will look up to you simply because you can buy booze without worrying about ID.
As much as we all like to see people make complete fools of themself, the quickest way to ensure a ruined stag do is to have a laissez faire attitude to underage drinking. Bars and cops tend to take a dim view of it and a 15-year-old being carried home at 8.30pm covered in his own vomit also puts a guilty downer on the rest of the night.
However, there is a good argument for giving youngsters a little bit of rope. Depending on the daytime activity there’s probably no harm in discreetly slipping him a can or two. Little brother/cousin will feel more part of the gang and, as long as he’s monitored and stays the right side of merry, he’ll be relaxed and uninhibited enough to join in with the ‘big boys’.
While daytime activities should be no problem for youngsters, the groom should be encouraged to lay down ground rules for the evening. Again a segmented night – possibly with a meal or pool bar to start -will allow them to feel part of the stag do while not spoiling anyone’s fun. But depending on how old little brother is, sadly drinking in bars and pubs may have to be ruled out – as going in some bars at all will be.
Ringing ahead to check on an individual pub or bar’s policy is the easy way round this. And while little brother will be chomping at the bit to discover the holy grail of strip and nightclubs he needs to know from the outset this will not be an option. Even leaving the legalities aside, you just don’t want to be responsible for a child’s welfare at the business end of a drinking session.
Alex, 35, provides a cautionary tale involving his brother, then 16. While it happened while he was at uni and little bro came for a visit rather than at a stag do it shows the dangers of taking on too much too young.
Alex said: “I said at the start of the night pace yourself and don’t go mad but with encouragement from my mates – who should’ve have known better than to take advantage of his eagerness to impress– he drank like it was a race.
“It was a miracle we were even let into the club but once inside he paid the price. He threw up everywhere, in his drink, on the floor, in the bog, over a girl on the way to the bog.
“I had no option but to take him home but he then sat down outside the club, puked again then as a final indignity wiped his mouth on the wall.
“Amazingly, I got him home stripped him and put him to bed. His clothes and trainers were covered in sick so they all went in the wash. The next morning his trainers had shrunk four sizes and run, dying all his clothes blue. My mum was livid.”
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