ABC's of Being in Your Mid-Twenties: A 26 Part Series

I sit here unemployed; not that I’ve chosen a life of non work, but rather the job market that was supposedly on the upswing has yet to pick me up from my recent “employment set-back”. Combined with the recent graduation of the class of 2013, my job prospects, even in the sense of internships or coffee runner are hard to come by, and thus I sit here unemployed.

My lack of income notwithstanding, I am presented with several thinking points, as this, in combination of applying for every job under the sun and chores, is the only thing in which I really take a genuine interest. My fellow classmates and I have been out of formal schooling, or rather undergraduate studies, for the better part of two and a half, say three, years. In this time many of us have gotten advanced degrees, or are still pursuing post-graduate degrees, and many are currently gainfully, if only just, employed. I’d like to think that in this brief window of time we have all gained a little more intelligence if only in the form of street smarts; we’re a little bit older, a little bit wiser, a little more bitter about the winters in Chicago and having to pay heating bills. This in mind, I began to try and catalogue the things that mattered to me. This came about in a sleep deprived state during which I had a pseudo “come to Jesus” moment in which I became very grateful for many things in my life; this forced me to re-prioritize a great deal, making lists and pie charts and so on. In doing this, however, I quickly began to discover that the things that once mattered a great deal didn’t seem so important anymore, and things that I once scoffed at were now at the center of my focus.

Based on these findings, I thought it best to create a “then and now” ABC’s list; a collection of things sorted alphabetically, the first list being something that was important then, in this case the timeframe of “then” includes the time between mid-middle school (approximately) until about senior year of high school, and the same letter reflected in something that is important now.

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The ABC's.

A – is for Abstinence.

A – is for Alcohol.

Back in the day, when we were no higher than knee socks or prairie grass, the idea of not having sexual intercourse until marriage didn’t seem like that big of a deal. We made non binding deals in Sunday school to save our selves for “the one” and as a 10 or 11 year old, this didn’t matter a whole deal because for all we understood or cared to know, sex was a messy catastrophe that only resulted in you inexplicable rolling around naked with, of all people, a cootie ridden girl. Gross. So, in brilliant Judeo-Christian form, many of us blindly accepted abstinence as a way of the righteous, a pathway to salvation, and most of all, the easiest way to avoid girls.

Enter college, or for those who were even more audacious, high school. As Talib Kweli once said, “puberty came, started hittin’ them cuties with game.” In one fell swoop, boys became boyish men, and girls became sexier, smarter, and frighteningly intoxicating. We couldn’t stop staring, and suddenly, cooties didn’t seem all that much of a deterrent. The chase had begun. And as we know, the rest is history; from whatever moment we all realized what are wieners could be capable of, waiting till marriage was the second worse thing in the world, second only to having your parents walk in on you in the act circa “American Pie.” (I do realize that this last passage is terribly gender specific, and I do apologize, however this is the only experience that I know. I never really pursued men, and I was once told to “write what you know,” so my apologizes.)

This of course is the perfect segue to discuss the second “A,” alcohol. College proved to be for many the first grounds upon which one tasted, in copious amounts, the sweet nectar of alcohol. For many it was cheap and dirty a la Keystone Light or Natural Ice or something similar. If you were lucky, you happed upon a party with a keg of Budweiser, quite literally the “king of beers,” (it should be noted that without a steady flow of income, expensive liquor was just out of the question. Therefore, a bottle or solo cup of Bud was quite literally the best thing that would happen that night.) Upon first taste, it has been said that less than 10 percent of first time drinkers like the taste of beer. Or at least cheap beer. But, neglecting all of our parents better heeding, we succumbed to peer pressure and drank it anyways because we were cool doing it. All of us freshmen, who were similarly disgusted by the taste of the over priced skunked and warm beer, were cool together. It gave us the courage to yell at an upperclassman, to go streaking across the quad when it wasn’t quite late enough, to chat it up with that hottie from sociology 101 and get her to laugh with you and hopefully spend the night only to wake up naked in shower of a dorm that wasn’t yours, leading of course to the most hallowed of traditions, “the walk of shame.” But that’s what mattered.

Fast forward to now, and the situation is not much far removed. Many have pursued beer snobbery, or have moved on to stronger and better drink choices, but alcohol as a thing is now forever instilled in our lives. It still gives us the overwhelming understanding that while drinking, we are goddamn kings amongst peasants. We get the courage to dance at weddings with the hot bridesmaid (sometimes a little too much), we get the strength to challenge that best friend, who clearly works out at the gym way more than you, to an arm wrestling match that you “almost win” every time, and we get that warm rush of blood to the head that reminds us of the glory days when we didn’t have to wake up for a brunch with that other cute couple at 9 the next morning. Many of us calm down, many still rave on, but it’s still there, and will be there, for the rest of our lives. And that is why “A” is for alcohol.