Slipping a one-dollar bill into his nephew Oliver’s palm and whispering “bottom shelf on the right,” local uncle Chip Gilmore sent the young boy on a harrowing journey during the Gilmore family Christmas party into the bowels of his Columbus, OH home to retrieve another beer from the basement fridge.
After settling into the worn, leather chair in the living room and finishing off his second beer of the afternoon, Gilmore reportedly sent his youngest niece Claire to summon his chosen nephew immediately.
“I was nervous at first when Claire told me Uncle Chip was looking for me,” said Oliver. “I thought maybe he was going to yell at me for leaving my Hot Wheels out. But Robbie was playing with them too and he didn’t get in trouble.”
Oliver reportedly immediately got up from the game of Settlers of Catan that was unfolding in the back bedroom, insisting that his siblings and cousins “skip his turn if he was not back in time.”
“Grab me another Heineken from the fridge in the basement,” Gilmore reportedly said when Oliver reached him in the living room. “It’s the green bottle with the red star. Don’t tell your brother what you’re doing if he asks.”
Sources confirm that Oliver then shuffled past his relatives assembled in the living room without making eye contact and headed for his uncle’s basement stairs.
“I was pretty scared to go down there,” said Oliver. “You can’t turn any of the lights on until you’re all the way at the bottom of the steps, and you have to turn them off before you go back up. But I had to go. Out of all of the cousins Uncle Chip chose me to get him another beer.”
Oliver, who had reportedly only held a beer bottle once before in his life, bolted past the old piano and camping supplies in the half-finished basement and made his way straight for the off-white Kenmore fridge reserved exclusively for alcohol, birthday cakes, and extra cartons of orange juice.
“There was a lot of beer in there,” said Oliver of the fridge that contained no more than 20 bottles and cans of various craft and light beers, “like more than anyone could probably ever drink in their life.”
After hearing his uncle call his name from upstairs, Oliver allegedly lingered for another moment at the fridge until the home’s furnace began making noises, startling him and prompting him to grab a beer and return upstairs.
At press time, Oliver was sipping a glass bottle of Coke his parents had allowed him to have as a treat, which he would reportedly “pretend was a beer” for the rest of the afternoon.
