Hat tip to the lovely Metalia for this topic idea….she requested these stories, people, and there were simply too many to put in her comments section.

I was at a wedding a few weeks ago, and several bourbons into the evening, I walked outside to get some air and found one of our friends smoking a cigarette with two of the groom’s nerdy-hip cousins.

“Do you want one?” he asked me, a knowing smile on his face that said “I know you, old and boring person, and there is no way on God’s green earth you’re going to want a cigarette.”

So of course I took one, because I get a little contrary when I’m a few bourbons into the evening.  He gaped at me, disbelieving.

“It’s been a long time,” I said, “but there was a phase.”

“WHEN?” he asked.

“Before I knew you,” I said.  He looked at me, uncomprehending.  (I have known him for 10 years, after all.  But I AM OLD and there was a time before that when I was young and did stupid things, okay?)

So I proceeded to half-smoke the cigarette before I realized I was over it, stubbed it out, went back inside, and felt mortified at my embarrassing show of drunkenness.  This is what drunken antics have become for me, apparently- one ill-considered half-smoked cigarette.  Sigh.

In the old days, though?  HOO BOY.  My friends and I would bust out the TBPs (tight black pants) and head out to parties, returning home with UPIs (unidentified party injuries- I went to a college that liked to abbreviate things, okay?)  and stories of absurd behavior.

• Like the time I recreated my entire high school musical theater tap dance routine…on top of a pool table.  (Low-hanging lamp + double time step = mild concussion!)
• Or the time I knocked on the door of the guy I had a crush on at 2 in the morning, waking him from a dead sleep, to ask if I could borrow some Skittles.  (I was playing it cool, okay?  I would just casually stop by ask if I could borrow some candy-coated chewy fruit candy, a totally normal request, and he would see how lovely and graceful and charming I was and  ask me out on the spot! Or look at me like I had two heads! Either/or!)
• Or (god, I’d almost forgotten this) the time when, egged on by my castmates, I performed my monologue from The Vagina Monologues on a busy thoroughfare with lots of foot traffic for any random soul who happened to be walking by.  This one.  Yeah, the one with all the moaning. Subtle!

I can only be relieved that I was young and in college in a time before cell phones, or the drunk dialing/texting would no doubt have been legendary.  Oh god, and twitter?  Thank my stars.  The last thing the Library of Congress needs is a permanent record of my youthful idiocy.