A Saturday Night//Nancy Botwin

McDonalds and the fourth season of Weeds. Key to recovering from a Saturday night black out.

Last night was the usual shit show. Went to a mixer with a fraternity (who just so happened to get a very attractive pledge class this year, good job boys), drank my body weight in vodka. Blacked out by 3 am but according to my phone log, I called and texted every person I knew in a 20 min radius until 7 am. Managed to stumble my way around campus to different parties dressed in a Hawaiian luau get up. All my friends have a similar story.

While I sat in bed with one of my best friends, lounging and debating if I could summon the energy to go find my lost vehicle, I began to remember bits and pieces of the night. Days like these, I have no doubt is a common scenario for many students both at Otterbein and elsewhere. The difference here? No night is ever a get drunk, get laid, and get home without getting arrested night.

Today, laying in bed, venting about boys and girls and exes and wondering where the fuck I parked my car, I began to ponder what crazy is. Maybe it was influenced by Nancy Botwin and the hours of Weeds I had been watching. The crazy I am, the crazy my friends are, and the shit we do, the lives we lead...it's all madness.

At other schools, there are numerous places to go party, to go drink. Here, at Otterbein, we have slim pickins of places to go to get belligerently drunk. You cannot avoid anyone really, an ex, a former best friend, or just a random one night stand that happened to go horribly wrong because he would shut up and high five'd you right after he got off. We eventually have become comfortable, or can at least justify it in our minds, with the ability to completely screw someone over, even your best friend, and still can sleep with ease at night. Usually by the end of your sophomore year, you realize just how small this school is, and how your moral compass has dwindled to some prehistoric version of a sun dial. The longer you attend this school, the lines between right and wrong blur, and you are stumbling along in some amphetamine and alcohol induced state hoping that you are doing at least what you think is right.

The next morning, I sit on my front porch, enjoying a cigarette, and watch as elderly couples and families dressed in their best, walk into church. There moral compasses are due north, or at least you'd hope. Sometimes, on Sundays, I sit for hours outside smoking cigarettes and laugh at myself, or memories of the night before. I often wonder what it would be like to be normal, to be up and sober for church at 10:30 am. I haven't attended a church service since my junior year of high school, and certainly wasn't sober at a service since I was 13. I think of the other half of the Otterbein student population, and what they did the night before. Watch the latest season of Glee on Netflix? Study? What does Kathy Krendl do on a Saturday night? Where does her moral compass point?

I don't mean to be so negative tonight. It's just been a long day.

xoxo TO