underage thinking

Sometimes you just have those nights where all responsibility goes out the window. We all have them. For me it's those nights when I really contemplate how I'll make the true leap to adulthood and cut myself off with a 3 drink limit. I know people get to a point in their lives where maturity takes hold and they fully realize the stupidity of staying out until 3 when they want to be productive the next day, but I'm not quite there yet. At least not fully.

Lately i've become a fan of getting up early on weekends. Prior to last year, I would easily sleep past noon on any given Saturday, but now I do my best to make it out of bed by 10am and doing something worthwhile (blog writing probably doesn't fit into that category, but for sake of argument i'll say it's right above watching TV or perusing iTunes). But more often than I'd like to think, I lapse back into the throws of stupidity and the bar hopping tales of the days I would like to say are behind me. And this is where this story begins.

It happened more recently than I'd care to admit. Things started out innocent enough - dinner at a sushi restaurant with a friend. We spit a bottle of wine - a bit ambitious for us with dinner - but neither of us had anything to do the next day so we saw no harm in it. I think it frightened the waitress to witness two women down a bottle of wine themselves, but we were well behaved and tipped well, so whatever qualms she had went out the window by the time we exited. From there, we hit up my favorite local dive, where we played pool, dominated the jukebox and proceeded to down two "old glory" specials apiece (a shot of whiskey and a PBR for $4). This right here was the crossroads of our evening. The night was still young (approximately 9pm) and we could easily head home and call it a night. My whiskey drinking abilities on the whole are pretty impressive and despite the "Old Glories", sobriety was still with me. This is where Responsible Jeni would hop in and drag Carousing Jeni to her couch to read a book or maybe catch a rerun of "The Office" before bed.

But Responsible Jeni apparently was stuck at the office for the night and Carousing Jeni made the decision to join some friends at another bar in Brooklyn. After a few rounds of beer pong, my friend from sushi is feeling ill. It's time to get her home. I help her into her apartment, hold her hair while she ralphs her sushi to oblivion, and make her drink some water before she crashes into her bed. Then my phone rings. Our friends have moved bars and want to continue the party. I check on her to make sure she's somewhat coherent (albeit already cursing an impending hangover), and head to the next bar. I finally make it back to crash on her couch by 2:30. (Given the hour my apartment just seemed too far of a journey to make & i didn't want to shell out the cash for a cab.) My relaxing evening of sushi and wine has now turned into the equivolent of an 8-hour tirade of drinking. Thank god I have enough sense to not do this on a "school night", but better luck next time on this whole maturity thing.