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Austin Piech
Indiana University - Bloomington
Class of 2011
My Most Memorable College Experience
There exists a horror in the morning after. It's more than the vomit stained bathroom floor, the pulsing headache, or the general malaise of feeling that seems to flow from every neuron your brain didn't lose. It's the stories. The oh-my-god!'s, the you-did-what?'s, and the you'll-never-believe's playing their roles as homemade purgatory. Sure, sometimes we laugh and turn occurrences into inside jokes and new nicknames. But not every tale we create brings laughter. It never occurred to me that the embarrassment and sometimes pain of the hours that follow nights of drunken revelry were those that rarely belong to one person alone.
We used to take the A Bus together. Sure, she didn't have class for half an hour after she got dropped off, but she'd wake up early just so we could spend that 15 minute ride with our fingers interwoven and my shoulders acting a poor man's pillow for her still not quite awake self. One of the best parts of holding her was how in our clasped hands I could feel the Claddagh ring I gave her our senior year.
The first time I ever used AlcoholEdu, I'll admit, I didn't pay attention. As a result, I never learned what I should have. I never learned that my thin body frame meant that I would become intoxicated quicker. I never learned that drinking on an empty stomach would allow the alcohol easier transfer into my blood stream. I never learned just how drastic the effects 12 oz of shots had on my decision making process compared to 12 oz of beer.
We always think that parents don't understand college culture when they give us their warnings. We think they don't know what it's like to live in our times, with our pressures, with our needs to fit in and be accepted. Those we trust even less than parents are our educators, our teachers, our civil servants. They share no blood tie. For them to want to tell us how to live is nothing short of pomposity on their behalf.
It's not until you wake up the next morning sharing breath with a stranger that you recognize how perfect and precise those warnings truly were.
I didn't know her. I didn't even know her name. Yet I could feel the dried saliva around my mouth, the warmth of her body permeating my own. The room was foreign, posters for bands I would never even dream of listening to blanketing the walls. I slid out of her bed quietly and performed my own private walk of shame. Marching across campus through the morning mist, I prayed that nothing happened. When I woke up in my own bed that afternoon, I prayed that it was only dream.
It wasn't. My phone was running out of memories from texts of exasperation from those who had seen my actions. Reading through the texts was like going through a play by play of the night before. "HEY YOU'RE DANCING AWFULLY CLOSE TO SARAH." Sarah, so that was her name? "DUDE, SOMEONE SAID THEY SAW YOU TWO KISSING." "WHERE ARE YOU, WE'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR 20 MINUTES. DID YOU GO HOME WITH HER?" I made a quick joke to my roommate that it really couldn't be called cheating if I didn't remember it. He couldn't even force a chuckle. My girlfriend called me, not even saying hello before she asked me if the rumors were true. I wish I could say that the phone call was short and sweet. Instead, it was long and drawn out with tears on both sides. I was a varsity wrestler in high school, my favorite band is AC/DC, and yet that day I found myself crouched in a corner, begging a redheaded girl two-thirds my size to stay on the line for even just a second longer.
When I did my second round of AlcoholEdu, I paid attention. I recognized not only friends in the warning, but myself as well. It was pressure to look cool in front of people who I barely even knew that drove me to drink after drink. And it was those same drinks that killed my ability to make sound decisions. I don't remember what happened that night. I was stupid. I was weak. I was drunk.
Single and sober. That's what I am now. I still see her sometimes on the bus, her bright red hair is a perpetual beacon for my eyes to catch, although I never have the courage to start up the conversation. Always small talk eventually. How're you? How's life? How're things between you and Tyson (her new boyfriend)? The starry shine of the silver Claddagh ring is blinding. She wears the heart in, indicating to the world that she's taken. On the last day of semester, as her stop approaches, I press the ring between my fingers as it lays still wrapped around the delicate white of her hands. "I was the one who gave you that, you know." She flashes a weak smile and moves towards the exit. She turns around and gives me one last glance through eyes grown moist. "You were also the one who proved it meant nothing."
And just like that, she's gone.
This was my most memorable college social experience. It wasn't a positive and I don't encourage colleges or universities to try and create more like it. Instead, all I have now is a warning. I don't touch alcohol anymore. I stop friends when they start to have too much, something my acquaintances never did. I try to be a better person than I was that night. I can't take back what happened. But I can stop others from making the same mistake.
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