I'm Out Of My Head Even When They're Not Around
I saw an away message last night that made me roll my eyes and groan. The gist of it was, "I want to go to so-and-so's birthday party, but I don't think I will because I don't like how I act when I'm drunk." Insert appropriate displeasure emoticons here.
Seems like there's a pretty obvious solution to me. Yet I know the obvious solution's nowhere near the realm of possibility. And this is the kind of attitude that makes me feel out of touch.
This seems to be the attitude espoused through college, in your finer dorms and fraternity housing. You can't have alcohol consumption without getting drunk. I always thought there were stages you went through. There was total sobriety, and after a couple drinks you might be "happy." Another one or two might push you into "drunk" territory, followed shortly after by the stages that are usually described in extremes in conjunction with a profane modifier, like "shitfaced" or "totally fucking blitzed." The beauty of this is that, with something called "willpower," you can go as far as you'd like. I've chosen to never go past "happy." Since I don't really care for the taste of alcohol, this isn't a problem. Most of my friends prefer the taste, but even then, they seem to always be content to stop at "happy."
Not so in many other cases. Judging by my sister's stories from college, some of the dimwits in her dorm need to progress directly to the blitzed end of the spectrum in order to get any enjoyment out of it. This appears to be the zone in which cars and buildings are destroyed, people are hurt, and elevators are defiled. From the sounds of it, the journey there is none too pleasant, either, with most taking advantage of the cheapest route to get there, be it discount vodka or Keystone beer.
Why does it even matter? It matters because it feels like a generational thing. Every other profile I see on, say, Friendster, someone feels the need to list drinking as a hobby, and not in the sense that wine-tasting could be a hobby (if you had the money or the vineyards to make it worth your while). It's that, or the picture with the "when we were drunk" caption under it. Or even worse, the picture where the person's holding a beer bottle or a red plastic cup (which begs the question of why the red plastic cup is always a beer cup, because I know I've used them for soda or apple cider, too). Somehow, a martini glass has a little bit of class that a Budweiser bottle doesn't. Either way, it becomes plainly obvious that my tendencies toward not worshipping the porcelain altar put me vastly out of touch with, well, all of that crowd.
And to be frank, I'd just assume not deal with the drunks. I'd probably make it expressly clear in my profile on Friendster or MySpace, but I decided that the "no drunks, no smokers, no tattoos or weird piercings, and no one-night stands" line was just too negative...honest, perhaps, but negative, not to mention that, as good old Bill O'Reilly said, people who don't want to know a straight-arrow are going to stay away from him/her to begin with. But on the other hand, much like that one profile I read through last week, it seems sometimes like everyone in this generation thinks they have to be drunk to be enjoying themselves. Obviously, not all of us are like that...so why does it seem so hard to find someone else who's not?
Similar to my sister's friend who overlooked the obvious solution to her grand dilemma, perhaps I should refocus upon the simple solution to mine: Live with it. No one's going to change a generation's opinions overnight. Maybe there's some merit to that, but I have my standards, my expectations. Why should I be the one to cast all of those away? And besides, I'm not the only one. There are others out there who feel like I do. Someone once told me that by the late twenties, we'll grow out of this phase, or at least most will, and the trick is to find someone who's grown out of it instead of waiting for people to grow up. Maybe that's a solution, but aren't there people who, like me and like most of my friends, never grew into it?
Sometimes, I think that those who follow the crowd have it so much easier. They aren't troubled with being their own person, and finding people to coexist with their own person...they can be happy with a bunch of other followers who all think the same way. I'm not saying I'm some great and unique person. I'm just saying that, in the us-versus-them duality, there are a lot more of them than there are of us. It almost makes you wish you were something that you know you'd never want to be.
At least we know what we don't want to be, though.
Seems like there's a pretty obvious solution to me. Yet I know the obvious solution's nowhere near the realm of possibility. And this is the kind of attitude that makes me feel out of touch.
This seems to be the attitude espoused through college, in your finer dorms and fraternity housing. You can't have alcohol consumption without getting drunk. I always thought there were stages you went through. There was total sobriety, and after a couple drinks you might be "happy." Another one or two might push you into "drunk" territory, followed shortly after by the stages that are usually described in extremes in conjunction with a profane modifier, like "shitfaced" or "totally fucking blitzed." The beauty of this is that, with something called "willpower," you can go as far as you'd like. I've chosen to never go past "happy." Since I don't really care for the taste of alcohol, this isn't a problem. Most of my friends prefer the taste, but even then, they seem to always be content to stop at "happy."
Not so in many other cases. Judging by my sister's stories from college, some of the dimwits in her dorm need to progress directly to the blitzed end of the spectrum in order to get any enjoyment out of it. This appears to be the zone in which cars and buildings are destroyed, people are hurt, and elevators are defiled. From the sounds of it, the journey there is none too pleasant, either, with most taking advantage of the cheapest route to get there, be it discount vodka or Keystone beer.
Why does it even matter? It matters because it feels like a generational thing. Every other profile I see on, say, Friendster, someone feels the need to list drinking as a hobby, and not in the sense that wine-tasting could be a hobby (if you had the money or the vineyards to make it worth your while). It's that, or the picture with the "when we were drunk" caption under it. Or even worse, the picture where the person's holding a beer bottle or a red plastic cup (which begs the question of why the red plastic cup is always a beer cup, because I know I've used them for soda or apple cider, too). Somehow, a martini glass has a little bit of class that a Budweiser bottle doesn't. Either way, it becomes plainly obvious that my tendencies toward not worshipping the porcelain altar put me vastly out of touch with, well, all of that crowd.
And to be frank, I'd just assume not deal with the drunks. I'd probably make it expressly clear in my profile on Friendster or MySpace, but I decided that the "no drunks, no smokers, no tattoos or weird piercings, and no one-night stands" line was just too negative...honest, perhaps, but negative, not to mention that, as good old Bill O'Reilly said, people who don't want to know a straight-arrow are going to stay away from him/her to begin with. But on the other hand, much like that one profile I read through last week, it seems sometimes like everyone in this generation thinks they have to be drunk to be enjoying themselves. Obviously, not all of us are like that...so why does it seem so hard to find someone else who's not?
Similar to my sister's friend who overlooked the obvious solution to her grand dilemma, perhaps I should refocus upon the simple solution to mine: Live with it. No one's going to change a generation's opinions overnight. Maybe there's some merit to that, but I have my standards, my expectations. Why should I be the one to cast all of those away? And besides, I'm not the only one. There are others out there who feel like I do. Someone once told me that by the late twenties, we'll grow out of this phase, or at least most will, and the trick is to find someone who's grown out of it instead of waiting for people to grow up. Maybe that's a solution, but aren't there people who, like me and like most of my friends, never grew into it?
Sometimes, I think that those who follow the crowd have it so much easier. They aren't troubled with being their own person, and finding people to coexist with their own person...they can be happy with a bunch of other followers who all think the same way. I'm not saying I'm some great and unique person. I'm just saying that, in the us-versus-them duality, there are a lot more of them than there are of us. It almost makes you wish you were something that you know you'd never want to be.
At least we know what we don't want to be, though.