DAY 2

Milwaukee, Wisconsin
April 14, 2009
Tue 9:05 PM

Day 2... so far so good, sticking to this blog thing. i'd thought i'd take my second blog to lay down some ground rules. first, i won't talk about work on my blog. even if something absolutely extraordinary happens... ok, maybe i will then. but i will not because i like my job, and i mean that literally and in that i'd like to keep it. being the web-savy person i am i know that what you put on the internet for all to see is exactly that- for all to see. so, my professional life will not be discussed in detail on this blog. sorry to disappoint. but who wants to hear about me working anyway... i sure don't. second, seeing as how i am not completely a hermit, ie, i have friends and family, i have decided upon using inatimate codewords for friends, and family, well, i shall refer to them by title and not name. but don't worry, the codewords will be for my reference and i won't say anything embarassing or potentially problemsome regarding my friends and family. they are just that, friends and family and i'd like to keep it that way. they will be mentioned as part of my life, such as, i hung out with Skyscraper today (I didn't actually), or I got off the phone with Ice earlier (again, not true, just an example of potential things to come).

So, today was filled with class, tuesdays being of the day i have the most classes. pretty uneventful. this morning the shirt i grabbed was my virginia tech shirt, may the victims of the shooting there always be remembered. the shirt is a way for me to show solidarity and remember them, because otherwise i honestly wouldn't think about it much. i remember i was eating lunch just off campus when i heard what happened, and later that day i found myself in virginia, it was just surreal. students just like me, going to class and getting murdered for nothing. a few days later i went back to virginia and bought the shirt i'm currently wearing. its a small token of rememberance.

anyway, sad things aside i'm currently writing this while downing a Kronenbourg 1664. Lent is over so i can drink again, not that i drink a lot, but i enjoy the occasional barley and malt based beverage. i probably have a beer about once every two weeks. sometimes in the evening its just like, hm, i could go for a beer, and i invariably grab a high life in the fridge. i am loyal to milwaukee, brew city. miller high life is usually my refreshment of choice, but i happened to have a 1664 in the fridge leftover from my birthday (i couldn't drink it then on account of Lent). 1664 is much better on tap, but the bottled variety quenches my thirst this evening just fine. Oh, and in case you're wondering, i didn't give up alcohol to be all holier than thou, i did it frankly cause it was one of the easier things i came up with.

that being said, something interesting actually happened in my second class this afternoon. the girl i sit next to said i had to read some articles written in the post, the student written campus newspaper. i used to read the hatchet when i went to gw, i found it stimulating and quite well written. i don't read the newspaper here because i'm only on campus when i go to class, so i don't know what's up most the time. the articles she mentioned were about the recent deaths of two students due to a lethal combination of drugs and alcohol. apparently an earlier written article was getting some bad feedback because it said something along the lines of these deaths were the result of irresponsible behavior regardint the use of alcohol and drugs, which is true. the responses ranged from "all college students experiment with drugs and alcohol" and "he was a 19 year-old kid." First, you're not a 19-year old kid, because you're an adult at 18. with the freedom of college also comes the responsibility and while it is sad and tragic for the students' friends and family, it was preventable. with the freedom of college comes the responsibility of being an adult, and using the excuse 'well everybody does it' doesn't make it ok. i'm not critizing what happened, we all know these students aren't the first and, sadly, will not be the last in this endless cycle of risky college behavior.

now, so you know i'm not being a jerk about this, i've done my share of college drinking i'll admit it. but, i can say that i can also count on one hand the number of times i've been drunk. seriously. also, i have never, never, NEVER done any illegal drugs. heck, i can't even remember the last time i took prescribed drugs, it was probably when i was in grade school last time i had an ear infection. anyway, i'm not saying this to prove i'm better than you or better than other students, i'm not. all i'm saying is the most important thing is, if you decide to engage in drinking or other events, is to do it responsibly. i was always with friends who looked out for one another, i always had a place to stay or a way to get back to my place and i never went too far. i never got so hammered i threw up (although some times it would've made me feel better had i), never really got a hangover (i attribute this to my overal health) and i never got so smashed that i didn't remember what i did. now, some people would read that and say, well then salbrent, you've never really been drunk. Fine, I'll accept it if I've never been drunk by your standards. I doesn't make me feel any less cool or anything, hell, i just don't care. i've had people say that to me in a sort of superior way, like, haha, you haven't been so drunk you pissed yourself in the corner? Nope. And i'm proud of that. The last time i got drunk i woke up with a post-it note on my head saying "remember, you will never drink again" cause i felt so awful (this was after leaving the bar and walking straight into a garbage can; later that night i got terrible vertigo and nausea and wound up with an ugly scar on my arm that i still don't know how i exactly got). and since then i haven't, we'll see how long i can live up to that post-it note, i sure am gonna try.

I suppose you could say i started drinking in college cause i gave into peer-pressure. but i don't like to say it that way, my friends didn't force me to do anything. i never drank in high school, so i figured i'd keep that up once i got to college. but eventually it became a sort of, well, everyone's doing it so i will, but there was no pressure to ever drink from my friends. and i had loads of fun not drinking, only one group of friends of mine drank, the other didn't drink so we did other things. i think its important to have a good balance in college. if all of your fun is derived from drinking then i pity you. no, that's the wrong way to put it, i think you're missing out. yeah, there were times i drank, but there were times that i went to baseball games, hockey games, hookah bars, rock concerts, sat around the wwii memorial waiting to see british royals (i did that twice!), get chinese acupressure massages, walk the monuments at night, just all the fun dc has to offer. and most of the best times took place when i was sober. i look at all the pictures people post on facebook and it makes me laugh, laugh because that's all they (apparently) have to live for. Getting hammered night after night, and taking lots of stupid pictures to show everyone how cool they are and how much fun they have. sure, i have pictures, but not a hundred. yes i've gottan drunk, but its hardly the highlight of my life and its near (practically at) the bottom of my list of things to do for fun.

i will say this though, the first time i ever got drunk did end kinda humourusly. yeah that's mispelled, whatever. i was over at a pal's place and we did the usual (for us anyway) jamming to music, drinking, just having a good time. there were five of us, let's call them Tiger, Prez, Slurpee, and Edge. Prez and Slurpee left, leaving me, Tiger and Edge. I was pretty sloshed, and I wanted to head back to my dorm, so I thought I'd just go in the bathroom and throw some water on my face to sober up, and then head out (i lived like half a block away). I remember I had a hard time standing up in the bathroom, it was quite difficult and i had a pounding headache to boot. as i stepped out of the bathroom, i decided to lie down in the closet across from the bathroom (it was a nice big closet and my original intent was to just lie down for a moment or two) and next thing i know Edge is pulling me up saying "salbrent, what are you doing, we thought you left." i had passed out in the closet. nice. that makes a good first story. The three of us crashed there that night, woke up late the next morning and laughed about it. No harm done, but i never lived it down that i passed out in the closet that night.

that was actually the most interesting thing to happen to me when drinking, most the time Tiger, Edge, and I would just crash there, wake up, laugh, talk (we learned that I can do a really good pseudo-German impression after a few beers, seriously, its convincing), and maybe take the metro the IHop in Ballston, Virginia. Other times I was able to make it to my dorm no problem, but I do remember one time when i had too much to drink (and this was after practically fasting and not sleeping at all due to midterms, needless to say that time it didn't take a lot to get me gone) and Slurpee and Tiger escourted me back to my dorm cause i couldn't stand, let alone walk very well. The problem was, neither of them lived in my dorm, and my dorm was the large freshman dorm with a cop always sitting at the front desk, and to get in you had to swipe your access card right in front of him. So, Slurpee and Tiger held onto my backpack (i was showing off something on my laptop that night, a good thing, cause my heavy backpack provided something for them to hold onto while walking me back) and they walked me back to Thurston and told me I had to sober up enough to get back to my room, cause if they walked in with me it'd be an instant red flag. It's amazing how you can sober up when you have to. I made it past the cop perfectly and up to my dorm. I even called Tiger to let her know I made it up there alright. She instructed me to go to bed (now I gotta admit, this part I don't remember much, but I've been told by Tiger this is what happened). I said i didn't want to because there was stuff on my bed, hardly unusual, my dorm floor was tile that never looked (and never really was) clean. And seeing as how I lived in a closet (and i mean that literally, ask me sometime and I'll show you pictures of my closet dorm) most of my books and other things ended up on my bed. Tiger told me to take the stuff off the bed and lie down. I did, and eventually fell asleep. I woke up the next morning and laughed because, while I was coherent enough to take the stuff off my bed and put on my pajamas, i apparently was not coherent enough to untie and take off my sneakers. So I woke up in my nice button down pajamas and pants, complete with my shiny Dada sneakers. Nice work.

I say these things to not glorify drinking or anything like that, i mean, i hope you find these stories amusing, cause in retrospect i do, but to point out what a great support system i had when i did decide to drink. Tiger, Slurpee, Edge, and Prez, we looked out for each other. There were times I helped them back to their dorm, just like they helped me. You always gotta have a designated walker. The important thing is to remember to be safe. My parents never told me "never party, never drink, yada yada." What I remember them saying was "be safe, be with friends, and- my mom was a stickler on this- always keep an eye on your cup!" that last one never really applied to me, i really didn't go to clubs and when i did, i was too cheap to buy anything to drink. but they taught me the right thing, if you just tell kids "don't do this..." when they do it they'll make bad decisions and they can end up in the trouble. The people who are realists and admit that, yeah, college students will drink and do stuff like this, and instead take the route of teaching how to make safe decisions have the right idea. It's like abstinence only sex education. It only leads to bad decisions, because like it or not, most teenagers will have sex. If you simply forbid them, then they'll just go on and make dumb mistakes casue they weren't given the right information to make safe decisions. Educating people doesn't give the impressions its ok to drink, its ok to have sex, it just says that hey, the best decision is to not drink and not have sex, but if you do it, do it safely. give people information and they'll make better decision. leave them in the dark, well, don't be surprised when they keep bumping into the wall. sorry, that's a lame attempt on my part to make an analogy.

well, this blog got more philosophical than i intended at the end, but, like i said, you never know where this blog will go, i even don't. i really don't sit down with an idea of what to write, i just let the fingers on the keyboard do their magic. that's it for now, i think i've covered every possible topic regarding alcohol consumption, don't expect to see it come up anytime soon. next time i'll talk about something more fun like sno cones, lollipops, and kittens. ok, maybe not.

salbrent