So…how drunk do you have to be?

I decided to take a break and go on vacation. I had a little bit of anxiety about it because I truly hate to travel! I am a big fan of sleeping in my own bed. I set my mind to it and packed…well…nearly everything that I owned…and went off to the beach to meet some friends. Everyone always tells me that I need to get out more because if I ever want to meet someone, I need to be somewhere other than my house working on my computer. Okay…so I went out! My new friends were so good to me. They understood my pain. One of them made sure to walk me through the crowd so I wouldn’t get shoved around. I think that she could possibly have seen the panic on my face as the guy next to me was spitting random sentences on me and spilling beer into my shoes. She took care of me all night! The other girl was so sweet too. I knew that she would probably have liked to party a little more but I think that some of my hopeless responsibility may have stifled her fun a bit. Oops…sorry…I definitely thank her for that! We wove through crowds and crowds of people as the music boomed and people yelled over each other! “Hey Baby!”…(UM….good one!)… “So, are you from here?”… (“No”)… “Oh. So, are you from here?”…. (my head made a strange shaking noise as if it was full of marbles and being shaken by a household blender)… Clearly this was not the place where anyone would ever meet anyone for anything other than a common one-night hookup. As a matter of fact, I was overwhelmed by the blatant attempts at it. Guys would walk straight up to us and put their arms around us. One actually touched me and I looked around and said, “Weird! I thought I felt someone touch me!”…he said, “Yeah, I thought we should spend some time together!”…uh…nope…wait…did you mean you’d like to get to know me over coffee sometime because you find my mind captivating? That’s so sweet!… I wondered if all these girls in short shorts and tall shoes were really having a good time? I suppose that they were. I would never understand it from my perspective though. The thought of screaming over music at strangers who had no intention of forming any lasting connection with me reminded me how much I love the gym. At least there, there’s an understanding that we will stand next to each other doing our own thing and never think to get each other’s names. There we can be assured that we will see each other every single day for years and years and never speak a word to each other. Ah! That’s the sort of intimacy I’m searching for. It’s the best feeling in the world to know that wherever we go, we can be sure to protect ourselves from real human interaction by turning on our ipods, texting other people from our cell phones while sitting next to strangers, uttering a quick “what’s your name?” in a club where the music it too loud to hear the answer…etc…Ah! Modern technology has truly saved us all from needing any social skills whatsoever!

I am very glad to have met these girls who hung out with us last night though. They are good people. The fact that they kept me from temper tantruming and closing my eyes and yelling, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” as people pushed me out of the way as though I was the dented soup can in the aisle at the grocery store to quickly grab the next one and check off another “thing to do” on their list, is truly amazing. I usually crack pretty quickly in that situation. I just kept smiling and being amazed that they didn’t dump me off with a bouncer to go have fun for awhile without Aunt Pollyanna!…of course I did have the keys…nah…I think they are actually nice people! I like them. Now my friend who introduced me to them on the other hand, had an interesting way about him. He yelled out the window of the car all the way home as though he was a barking dog with his head panting out the window. I thought, “um…dude! It’s three o’clock in the morning and this is a rural community. If I get pulled over for what you’re doing, I’m going to offer you to him in return for letting the rest of us go.”

If my new friends ever need a tour guide in an electronics shop, I will definitely be there for them! In the meantime, I learned that I absolutely am NOT missing anything by not going clubbing. When I meet someone, I am certain that he will likely be somewhere that I am at my best and don’t have a look on my face that suggests that I think there’s something wrong with everyone in the room!