Rookie Mistakes
After a few drinks, responsibility is just another thing you left in the Uber.
By Mallory Arnold, Ohio University
“Everyone makes mistakes… Everyone has those days! Everyone knows what I’m talkin’ bout, everyone gets that way…”
Thank you, Hannah Montana!
You send a silent shout out to the Disney-rockstar goddess as you sit on the street curb, massaging your slightly swollen ankle. Your boots are laying on the ground next to you, one with a heel snapped clean off. Anyone could look at you sitting there and add up everything that had happened.
Classic night out mistake #2304: Never wear high heels on bricks.
Many a time you’ve stepped outside with my friends, ready for a night of dancing, eating pizza and prancing around the town. Many a time you’ve told yourself “Ok no embarrassing yourself tonight.” And many a time, you’ve ended up sitting on the curb with broken shoes and a bruised ego. Whether you like to admit it or not, most students make the same mistakes over and over again when they go out—here are the seven most common.
1. Parting the Red Sea
Whenever you go out to a nice dinner, it’s like your hands suddenly get replaced by crab claws instead. It’s always the night you decide to treat yourself too.
Ooo! A cranberry juice drink? Don’t mind if I do!
One minute you’re all cheering to our wonderful success and normal, functional hands, when you somehow manage to knock over your glass and everyone else’s. If you’re lucky, it’ll land on the birthday girl’s new white satin dress or submerge your new phone into a watery grave.
This horrifying scene usually follows with a thousand napkins becoming uselessly limp in the battle and the rest of the table groaning, “We can’t take you anywhere!”
2. Clean Up on Every Aisle Ever
Everyone has a talent. Some of us can paint, some can sing and some can fall anywhere, everywhere and wherever without the slightest logical reason. If you’re this type of person, you don’t have to be wearing tall shoes to trip on absolutely nothing. You’ll walk into any doorway and magically fall over air.
The funny thing is you’ll mange to take down someone else next to you in the process.
Usually it’s a very important looking woman whose none too pleased that you yanked on her hair extensions on your way down to the floor.
3. Mom…Mom?!
When the night gets crowded, you turn to your friend and give her a quick hand squeeze to make sure she knows you’re there and that the squad is still together. Then you quickly realize you just held a random person’s hand and there’s no viable escape route for you to take, so you stand in uncomfortable silence.
Getting separated from a friend group is one of the most terrifying things and can take you from feeling like Beyonce to feeling like a 5-year old stuck in between revolving doors. Of course, you’d think it would be easy to find everyone with the technology these days, but no one seems to have their phones when you need them. Usually you’re left stuck in the middle of a crowd screaming, “Mom!” in the hopes that someone will see your white flag and return you home.
4. The Morning After
It’s Sunday morning and you feel sunshine warming your face as your eyes flutter open. You roll over in bed and… oh my god. No. What is this? Did I really do that last night?
A huge stack of Taco Bell wrappers lay innocently next to you, overstaying their welcome like they’re about to ask to go out for brunch.
The worst feeling in the world is sitting down with your friends and discussing the terrible things that you all decided to eat the previous night.
“I ate a peanut butter pickle sandwich. Extra pickles.”
“I ate three Twinkies.”
“I fell asleep with a giant burrito under my pillow.”
5. Suddenly a Millionaire
The best thing about going out and having a great night, is that at some point during that time, you become the biggest millionaire since Daddy Warbucks. At the beginning of the night you have a very strict budget, counting out pennies as the bartender gives you a furrowed eyebrow raise.
But in a few hours all your smarts fly out of the window, along with your dollar bills too. You start buying anyone and everyone drinks, snacks, anything you can get your hands on. As your credit card gets more and more beat up, you start to convince yourself that every other expense can wait.
Bills? Who cares. Groceries? I’ll go on a diet. New shoes? I’ll go barefoot.
Either you go to bed with an empty wallet or wake up with actually more money than you originally had. Can’t decide which is scarier.
6. Cracking Under Pressure
Your phone is locked in hand one second, the next it’s flailing across the room to some slow motion theme song, ready to crash into the wall and shatter your chances at staying connected with the world for the next month.
Why, when you want to go out, does your phone suddenly turn into the heaviest, slipperiest thing you could carry? No matter what you do, how gently it falls or where you set it down, your phone wakes up the next day with battle scars. It doesn’t help that when you accidentally drop it a stampede of people decide to pass by and walk all over it. It’s a jungle out there, folks. Keep your friends close, and don’t even bring your phone.
7. Eww
You really hoped it was gum you just set my foot in, because there are 1,000 things worse that it could be on a college campus. You sigh, feeling exhausted and defeated after a night out of “Whoopsies” and “Ohmygod did I break somethings.” It can make you feel like you should never be allowed out of the house.
Suddenly, you hear a soft cough. You glance to your right and see a few feet away a girl wearing a very stained dress, holding her broken, mangled shoes and a shattered phone. She looks over with a knowing look, and you share a pitiful nod at each other for a minute before bursting out in laughter.
Then she turns and asks, “Do you want to go get a really big burrito?”
And you do.
And guess what? You don’t regret it at all!
