My other Buddy who we'll refer to as NOPE.

In an effort to protect the anonymity of my friends, I'm giving them all aliases that somehow correspond to some ridiculous thing they/we did or said. I've decided to refer to my best friend, and the only person I still talk to from "the old days" as NOPE and this short story is how he got that name:

The downtown area of our neighboring city is an interesting mix of nightlife options. There are casinos, clubs, bars and music venues. While this may not seem very interesting to an outsider, what is unique about the downtown area is that the bars all stay open until 6 am, insuring that if one wishes to get severely hammered...they have ample time to do it. So one night my buddy and I are out making our way from bar to bar and I finally hit my wall. At this point in time I had a fairly largely alcohol tolerance, but my friend had a higher one. So in the most logical of decisions, since I was bordering on unconsciousness, I gave him the keys to my vehicle.

Its important to note that my vehicle is a soft top Jeep Wrangler. Anyone that knows anything about Jeeps knows soft top windows are not cheap, and as such, the doors to my Jeep were never locked, because I would rather a thief open the door and realize there is nothing to steal rather than cut the windows only to realize there is nothing to steal.

So at this point in the night, I'm verging on passing out, and we decide its time to go home so we stagger to my Jeep. My buddy wisely (or not) takes position behind the wheel and I manage to get myself into the passenger seat and buckled in without falling out. As I was getting ready to take a nap the always unlocked passenger door was rudely yanked open. A pair of men in ordinary street clothes stood there and quickly flashed what may or may not have been Police Badges, and asked "You boys been drinking tonight?" to which my buddy replied.

"NOPE!"

And mashed the accelerator, leaving them standing there bewildered and the passenger door of the vehicle flapping until I realized what was going on and shut it. NOPE has become a phrase deeply ingrained in our vocabulary now, and I feel a fitting alias for the stories where this friend makes an appearance.