Growing up, I could have bought a McMansion in a crowded subdivision if given a penny every time my Mom would tell me that any social ills were caused by my advanced maturity. Trite phrases such as, "Girls mature faster than boys!", or "You're 12 with the mind of a woman in her mid-20s Pru; others will catch up eventually!", rang in my ears each time I could be found crying under my duvet (you may find this a constant in my life, even now -- LOVE duvet seclusion).
I'm two months off the advanced age of 31, yet give me five minutes on Facebook and I'm feeling 61. Tell me, is it only recent generations that just cannot give up the bar/drunken fool stage? As a non-drinker I'm biased, I know, but really - you're in your 30s, is there a need for half of your online photos to be various incarnations of your Drunk Asshole face? I get it, you're YOUNG! FREE-SPIRITED! ZANY! One picture of this would suffice.
Most people think that those who don't drink (or to excess) are boring. I'm sure I am frightfully dull to a very large subset of the population, but I don't care. If asked to brainstorm as to what would constitute an evening with friends, the word "bar" would only be included if it meant I was going to play trivia there. Ideally I would want to spend an evening in, have a nice dinner, talk, watch a movie, do things that respectable grown-ups do. Bottles of wine with casual tipsyness - fine, but as soon as a picture is taken of someone making googley eyes and sticking their tongue out, I'm gone.
I have tremendously fond memories of my drunken times in my late teens/early 20s. I have a fair amount of drunken photography taken by me and of me, some involving cleavage asparagus, others featuring a heavy-lidded Pru smoking cigarettes despite being a non-smoker. Thing is, I was in college, and that's what you do in college.
Once we hit our 30s surely it's time to pack up the frat and grow up?
12 comments:
Mmmm . . . cleavage asparagus.
If only I'd been there.
I hit my drunken phase late -- grad school -- and am still slowly coming out of it. Expect a few more pics along the way.
Yes! I've always hated pubs and nevr understood why all social events started or ended in them. Give me food based entertainment any day. Not that I dont party every now and again but I need my food. Not in my cleavage mind!
I went to my first goth club at 16 and never went again after I turned 18. I've been to normal clubs since but always for someone's birthday and I'm sure we're tucked up in bed before the fun starts. I don't know if it's because I haven't been single since I was 16 or if it's because I don't drink, but I see most of my 25 year old friends on Facebook and think they look pathetic. I would love to hang out with them and chat or do something fun, but they're just not interested if there's no excuse to get shitfaced.
It's the ones that have kids that really get me though. How can you stay up all night getting pissed and still look after your child the next day? And how can you do that several times a week?
Not alone - I turn 32 in less than a month, and it's been...at least 6 years since I've been to bars routinely. Even then, it's been closer to 8 since I spent a lot of time shitfaced. I think the only pic I have of me where you KNOW I'm drunk was my 25th birthday. I don't handle hangovers as well as I used to, and I can't pack away the drinks like I used to either.
Also? At some point you have to be a responsible adult. Yeah, yeah...being an adult sucks. But puh-lease...plan for the time when you actually have to be a grown up. And if you can't/won't? Why subject me to the images, just because I'm your friend?
amen.
asparagus, huh?
Couldn't agree with you more. I see lots of old friends on FB posting the same pictures we would have taken 20 years ago, and my SIL ditches her kid every chance she gets to go party in the city. I don't get it. Me, I like a nice night at home with a cocktail or a glass of wine.
I never did the drunken college thing. I went to a local college and worked full-time. I had Angel shortly after college and didn't hang out in bars until I was in my thirties. b and I both enjoy a good bar but it is to sip good liquor and have conversation. I didn't get the frat party mentality than and don't know. You are definitely not alone.
Got lots to say about this. But I won't.
Only... One friend of mine from my early twenties, his hands actually shake because he still carries on the same way ten years later. Scary stuff.
I was never precisely a talented drinker and was teetotal throughout my early twenties, but I seem to get pissed on fresh air and half a pint of lager these days. I do enjoy a cold lager beer on a summer evening, or a glass of fizzy wine, but I find it easy to over-cook. I never get as far as the googly-eyes, I just get really loud and then start being sick.
Hubby used to be a enthusiastic consumer of 15 pints a night at the weekend, but is now visibly staggering after 4. Tempus fugit.
As if it is courageous to post pictures of yourself shit faced and show everyone how brave you were to get so totally drunk and weren't you having a ball? Well no, not really, thank you.
I spent much of my late 20s in a drunken mess, and only just this past weekend I noticed that it has been a damn long time since I've had a hangover (which, I, of course, remedied immediately by drinking absurdly on the day of my graduation, and feeling like I'd been run over by a truck the next day... no thank you).
Anyhow, while I love facebook, I think I've had the opposite scenario with my friends. I was always the wild one, so even though there are the occasional pics of people being stupid, I am overwhelmingly (once again) the only one who doesn't constantly post about how "MOTHERHOOD IS THE TOUGHEST JOB YOU'LL EVER LOVE"- ugh. Gag me. I get it. You reproduced (as if the seventeen albums dedicated to every fit and whim of your offspring didn't clue me in...). Most of you have done it more than once. Success. Applause. You all now proudly announce all the ways in which you are sacrificing your own life, your own personhood for that of MOMMYHOOD.
Sigh. I sound like a bitter hag (which I kind of am, right now). But yeah. I think the whole facebook thing is just so captivating because we can look in on others, not as they actually are, but as the people they want us to think they are. Interesting. I hope someday when I'm a parent, I have more to say about myself than that my child has become the only thing in my life of any value. Sigh.
Oh, and I saw your 10k time on Nike+! You go with your fast runnin' self! That's a badass time! I cautiously stepped back on the treadmill earlier this week (I had a possible stress fracture, but probably just a wicked shin splint, so I really shouldn't have run, but the only way you can tell they're healed is that it won't hurt when you run. Thus, you have to do the prohibited activity in order to determine whether you can do the prohibited activity. I don't know. It's all very daring, if I do say so myself. But I didn't hurt after I ran, so I consider myself healed...).
You kids get off my lawn!
I like a good throw-down as much as the next lady, but now that I know precisely what sort of hangover I'm likely to have from whatever I'm drinking, I limit things to a glass (or three) of wine or a few beers. I'm a big lady, I can pull that off no problem.
But... yeah. Well past the drunken photo stage. I'm eternally grateful that my early 20's happened well before everyone and their dog had a digital camera, so a lot of my debauchery went undocumented. Whew.
Post a Comment