This past Saturday, my best friend and I went out for a night on the town. 21 year-olds, liquor and lack of self-control can apparently bring problems that I wasn’t ready for.
As we were walking down the street waiting for the next empty cab, four young, Black, Philly-esque (see State Property circa ’06) dudes start walking towards us. Now, on any other day, I wouldn’t pay these dudes any mind (I live in the city, so I see these same types all the time) and I was planning on it until I heard this:
"You’re the thickest b***h I have ever seen in my life. Gottdamn!"
I FLIPPED out. I can’t even repeat half the words that were coming out of my mouth; flying webdings in the air and all that. In typical reactionary fashion, the fellas spewed some of the same stuff back. As I’m standing on the edge of the curb talking reckless, one of the dudes starts to walk towards me. At that point, I took my shoes off, back-pedaled and proceeded to jog. As soon as we saw a cab, we wave it down and breathed the biggest sigh of relief since OJ in ’96.
Now, why talk about this? Here on AB last week, a discussion about being young and making dumb decisions came up in the post related to the whole Cassie/Rihanna photo-fiasco. I was one of the people who used the “being young means making mistakes” card in defense of the girls. We all did things in our younger years that, in retrospect, make us cringe but that’s called growing up. After Saturday night’s escapade, I changed my mind.
I knew better than to cuss those dudes out. Three hours earlier, I was talking to similar types on the street as if they were my friends. Everyone is out, having fun … no drama around here. Here I go having one too many drinks and now I’m spewing language out of my mouth that would make Lil’ Kim join a convent in protest. The situation could have been worse. I was lucky that cab rolled up when it did.
Yet, everyone has had one of those “Blame it on the Alcohol” moments, right? I’m having a hard time looking at that as an excuse for my behavior but I can’t lie, it does help me feel better.
Life lesson: Being young does not give you the right to ill-behave. My father raised me better than that. Alcohol isn’t an excuse, even if you want it to be.
Question: Is there ever an excuse to make unwise decisions? What is your worst alcohol-related moment? On the gender-tip, why do (some) males proceed to sexually-demonize a woman on the street? Am I the only one that wants a new State Property or Young Chris album?
