On Sunday I will be gathering all my little sorority chickadees together (I’m the advisor) for a “workshop” on “risk.” Which basically translates as, “Please do not do all these stupid, stupid things. Because of liability and rules and laws and such. And also because they are bad.”
Which makes me feel just a lil’ bit hypocritical. Because y’all, it’s not like I’m a saint or anything. I mean, I was a pretty good kid in high school and didn’t even have an alcoholic drink till my freshman year in college. I’ve never smoked and I’ve never done drugs. But I can assure you that waaay back when I was a college girl, I certainly flirted with some “risk” “management” “issues.”
Like this particular incident my senior year. When I was the chapter president.
We decided we wanted to have a party and get a male stripper. No, I don’t really remember why. We may have discussed this in a meeting. We all pooled our money (at least it wasn’t sorority money!) and someone went out and hired a stripper and got her boyfriend to buy us lots of alcohol. (Why? Because not one of us was 21, ironically.)
On the appointed night we went to her townhouse. I think we thought the stripper was coming dressed as a cop (?) and we ordered pizza and the “Pizza Guy” showed up, who of course turned out to be the stripper. And lo, it was totally icky and awkward. To cope with all this weirdness, I began to drink rather a lot.
After the stripper was finished stripping, he went upstairs with a couple girls to smoke pot. And I was hanging out outside with some of the other girls and someone asked me to hold their lit cigarette and I took a big puff because I had never smoked before, and it was gross. So I drank some more (not like, beer or anything, no we were hard core with our vodka and various mixers).
Eventually we headed back to campus and there was a party in one of the halls so we decided to stop by. We traipsed across campus with a backpack full of vodka, because that was how everyone walked around on Friday and Saturday nights, with backpacks on like they were really going to the library or something, rather than carrying around two six-packs in their L.L. Bean gear.
So we were hanging out in this dark dorm suite with loud music and even though I went to a really small school, I’m not sure I actually knew anyone there. Or maybe there was someone there I had a crush on? The solution? Drink more vodka. Except, crisis, we didn’t have anything to mix it with. Or chase it with.
Then someone brilliantly suggested we chase it with WATER. Like, I have no idea how that was supposed to help, but we thought it might. And oh, I was so very drunk by then. Eventually, my sorority little sister managed to convince me that we should go back to our suite and she would make me something to eat. Something Pillsbury, I think, from one of those cans that pops open (biscuits?).
I drunk-dailed (or actually, drunk-paged) a guy who I had a weird “more than friends” relationship with and may still have been on the phone with him when I decided that maybe I should go hang out on the cool tile floor of our bathroom instead.
And that’s the night that I got sick from drinking too much for the first time ever. A story I will certainly not be sharing with my chickadees.
