That 10%
The best times are statistically rare
All the time, I think about the night my alma mater opened a pub on campus and celebrated by hosting a “100 Days” party for my graduating class. To us, what was once an old, bare, decrepit room formerly used for Covid testing became a newly furbished, modern place to get hammered with of-age friends. This drastic change, along with the dirt-cheap three dollar beers and no need for an Uber to get home, was what made the new pub so great.
My closest friends weren’t 21 yet, so I nervously went to the event by myself in hopes I’d see someone I felt comfortable enough with to latch to for the night. I did - I found my Texan friend Alex, who spent the time flashing pictures on a digital camera. All the while, I sipped my drinks and hoped she wouldn’t leave my side.
Of course it came time for karaoke and that was when Alex put her photography skills to rest and jaunted to the front of the pub. To no one’s surprise, she managed to get the president of the school to sing a song with her - “All My Ex’s Live In Texas.” We all laughed as they sang about finding refuge in Tennessee. More of my classmates took turns and as each of them went up, us in the audience could hear the alcohol start to sing. Each song got more and more out of tune and coincidentally enough, they got more and more unorthodox. It was funny because by then, my drinks were kicking in, too.
I never dared to participate in karaoke until that night.
I don’t remember much except for slamming my can down on the table and pushing my way through the crowd to get to the front of the pub. I drunkenly typed Knock Knock Mac Miller into the computer, knowing full well it wasn’t appropriate for karaoke at a Catholic school. I didn’t even type “karaoke version” into the Google search - I just smashed the link of a lyric video from 2011 and my fear of singing to the world was GONE.
As Mac and I preached to the pub together, the entirety of my peers stared at me like I was a little crazy. I jumped over to a lot of them and shoved the microphone in their faces in hopes they were having as much fun as I was, but all of them gently pushed it away.
Confidently rapping, I made my way around the crowd and came face to face with the guy I had recently dumped. It would have been easy to skip over him, but I thought WHATEVER! and shoved the mic in his face, too. He shook his head no but watched me with undying love in his eyes. I honestly didn’t care.
The president was probably still there solemnly watching me shout expletives into his brand new pub. I didn’t really care about that, either.
Unfortunately, the 100 Days party ended and I had to stumble back to my apartment by my lonesome. Happy with my performance, I busted into the room to see my sober roommates at our kitchen table.
I told them all about my fearlessness and they congratulated me. When Emily made some popcorn for herself, I did a microwave dance and loudly admired the shape of her brand new butter in its container. She giggled uncontrollably at my antics.
Suddenly, my phone started to vibrate. I took it out of my pocket and saw my ex’s name in big bold letters on the screen. Emily and I went silent, looked at each other with wide eyes for about one second, and then started howling in laughter. “AW HELL NAW!” I shouted. No lonely man would be talking to me that night!
He ended up leaving a voicemail that I didn’t have the stomach to listen to. Emily and I watched my thumbs drunkenly slide across my phone to go ahead and delete the godforsaken thing. To my luck, it automatically started to play out loud. He praised my “legendary karaoke skills” or whatever he called them and then asked to see me that night. In response, I screamed in horror and deleted the voicemail before he could finish the sentence, getting another laugh out of Emily.
I decided that I would be continuing the night’s affairs (come on, I only had a 100 days of college left!) and changed into a t shirt. Feeling vivacious, I didn’t care to look “good” for the remainder of the night. I took a shot of something strong before racing my way down to the other side of campus where all the parties were happening. I had no idea who was hosting what, so like a kid picking candy out of a Halloween bowl, I picked a random place that was blaring music. I ended up walking into an apartment that was hosting a formal afterparty and it took me about three minutes to realize the place belonged to my ex’s entire friend group.
At first, I was like, uhhh…. But then I thought,
WHO CARES!
The partiers (ex not present) were happy to see me and, therefore, I TURNED UP.
I felt like a free bird in my t shirt and danced with all my heart. Two girls I had never talked to came up to me and shouted over the music, “How do you not care like this? We wish we could dance they way you do.” All I said between choppy breaths was “Just DO it! Who cares what people think!” before grabbing their hands and going absolutely crazy. They looked at each other and shrugged before doing the same. After that night, I never really talked to those girls except for a “Hi!” in passing, but even so, I felt like I knew them as if we had been friends forever. From then on, I never underestimated the power of an oddly intimate moment.
I danced for hours until I was too exhausted to do anything more. My legs literally struggled to hold me upright, but of course I had to walk all the way across campus to get to my apartment. With sheer giddy willpower, I made it.
Initially writing this, I didn’t know what the moral of the story was. But now, I think I had been taking life way too seriously for a while before my last semester of college started and it wasn’t until the 100 Days party that I realized I needed to really enjoy myself for once. Maybe it was being out of an unhealthy relationship or the three dollar drinks or the (once again) mystical powers of Mac Miller. Maybe it was all those things combined.
After I graduated, I wrote that on average, partying was mediocre 80% of the time and the best 20% of the time. Thinking about it now, with even more hindsight, it was definitely 90% mediocre and 10% the best. During my last semester, there were probably 5 standout times equivalent to or greater than the 100 Days party. To do some math, assuming I went out almost every weekend that semester, that means 31.25% of the parties I went to were the BEST. And I mean the best, immaculate. That’s a huge statistical jump (statistics…Mac Miller… the dots are connecting...).
That semester was the absolute best of my entire college career, but not just because of the social events. I had amazing friends (more to come about them), an awesome class schedule, a growing relationship with God (drinking was the thorn in my side, of course), increased confidence - the list goes on.
I’ve matured a lot since then and I don’t think I’d go back and do it all again, but I’ll always think of it fondly. After all, adolescence presupposes growing up.
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