If your Designated Driver is also sometimes referred to as The Handler, you need a situational safe word.  You may also be interested if:

• You or another person in your party of party-goers does not respond to “Stop it. Seriously stop. Stop. Stop. STOP.”
• Your wingman or wingwoman is too friendly to people you can tell will be trouble.
• You have an ongoing relationship with someone who likes to tease you so much that you can’t be sure if Wednesday got removed from the calendar or maybe you just ate too many brownies.

I’m not talking 50 Shades of Gray, safe words here (surprisingly, the amateur soft-porn pretending-to-be kinky writer E. L James does sprinkle in the use of standard s-words ‘yellow’ and ‘red’). No, a situational safe word is a previously agreed-upon term that, once uttered, establishes I’m done here and I’m serious. No more party for you.

There’s no real safe word generator as far as I can tell, but using this tool on the “Somewhat Uncommon” setting is fairly comical.  Get started with your own situational safe word today! Or just use White House.

Ours is “White House.” Used in a sentence: “You were a monster last night. First you got bear arm, then I had to White House you.”

We obtained the term from two very good friends with very colorful hair. At least one of these women gets punchy when she’s had too many martinis and I witnessed the two words calm her like a tranquilizer dart. Yep, I was definitely going to steal that strategy.

For example, two boys offer to buy us bottle service. Katelyn is thinking, “ooh, free alcohol!” I’m thinking that these kinds of things are never free. We hold a retainer, discuss the pros and cons, but finally, I have to do it. White House. We walk away and I don’t have to spend the night fending off make-out attempts while guiltily sipping from a vodka cranberry.

That is merely a concise illustration and is 100% unrealistic because I would never turn down free alcohol and I’m a champ at turning down make-out attempts.

This is what happens when you tell your friends that all you want is sour cream.

Last week I woke up, said “sour cream” and giggled. Hazy memories teased me and I spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out if I had only dreamt of clutching a soft stuffed-animal to my chest before passing out drunk.

Katelyn and I reviewed the night. Did we get mexican food? Of course we did, that is when Drunk-Sami started shouting SOUR CREAM. “But I don’t remember posting it on my facebook wall.” No, Katelyn did that as I slept. Right, so I palmed carne asada fries (with SOUR CREAM) into my face, then we went home and I dozed off?

Not quite.

Apparently I felt it hilarious and necessary to flail wildly after my friends strapped me into the passenger seat. “You threw that old big gulp against the window and got water everywhere. I had to White House you for the second time.” The…second…time?

Yep, I got the Cacao safe word from Portlandia. Click & scroll to watch episode clip.

The first time went largely ignored when she White Housed me for trying to smoke a cigarette. She had to ninja chop it out of my hands. Why did I neglect the sacred words? We figure it’s because she forgot to first use the “joke” safe word: Cacao. The joke safe word is intended to provide its target with the opportunity to cease offenses peaceably without escalating to code White House. It’s also great for tickle fights. We also realized, after analyzing the SOUR CREAM night, that Cacao is essential to the efficacy of White House. Just as yellow always precedes red, you kind of need to give Drunkee McGee a chance to slow down.

We got home without further incident. I don’t even think I shouted “woooh, party!” out the windows at pedestrians like I usually do. I took off all my clothes at the foot of the bed (which is unusual as I usually sleep in at least a t-shirt). I went to the bathroom, then lied in bed. Then I got out of bed and curled up on the floor. I started to whimper.

“Here, take this,” Katelyn said. “Fluffy bear got me through a lot of hard times, too.”