When I was in health class my freshman year of high school, I had the opportunity to wear “drunk goggles” (goggles that distort your senses so that it simulates what the world looks like when you are incredibly intoxicated) for the first time.

I had a lot of fun wearing them as I clumsily walked down the hallway.

I had the opportunity to try them on again in my senior year when I took psychology. Then I had a brilliant idea: what if I could get a bunch of people to play tag while wearing those goggles in the wrestling room? For a TV production project, I filmed myself and a few friends playing tag with the drunk goggles on, making complete idiots out of ourselves.

It was a blast.

Fast forward to my senior year of college and I was looking at the fliers you normally see around campus. I learned that there would be a game of Mario Kart with the players wearing drunk goggles at the Knight Club. Remembering my fond high school memories of stumbling down the hallways and playing tag with those goggles on, I knew that I had to compete.

When I first arrived, I met a police officer who would have me try sobriety tests with the drunk goggles on. I tried the goggles on and everything around me looked incredibly distorted. The Knight Club was green and I saw rainbows everywhere. The world looked like it was spinning and I could not tell where anything was. I am a pretty clumsy person, so I am not sure if I would pass this test without the goggles, but whenever I tried it, I tipped to my side within my first few simulated drunken footsteps. Next, the officer asked me to stick my leg out in front of me. That didn’t exactly work either.

Then I decided I would watch other people play Mario Kart with drunk goggles on. People were driving off the road on even the simplest of tracks and everyone constantly ran into walls. It looked as though it was impossible to drive in a straight line with those goggles on. Still, someone managed to arrive in first place.

Then it was my turn to play.

I knew right off the bat that I would not do well. I forgot my glasses so my eyes were not be able to focus to begin with. Drunk goggles would make everything worse. When I say worse, I really mean entertaining for whoever was watching me.

There were three pairs of drunk goggles that affected our senses differently and we switched after each race.

Most of the time, I came in last place. I managed to fall off one of the easier tracks you could play. I kept aiming for the speed boost and I thought I would make it, but I missed. The same applied to the game’s power-ups. After the first race, I took off my goggles and the screen moved slightly to the right. I put them back on and the screen moved back to the left. I raced two more races and they were both epic and entertaining fails.

TLDR; Drunk-goggles-Mario-Kart: a [creative] reminder of the seriousness of driving while impaired. Get the laugh from the activity, learn the lesson. Seriously.