Growing Up SUCKS

There were fish in here before, I SWEAR.

East coast winter is here. Granted, I wasn't here for SNOWPOCALYPSE '09, but being a spoiled Californian, it's pretty miserable. Even the fountain right behind the medical school agrees. If you can't tell, most of this fountain is frozen except for where the water is being forcibly moved by the pump. Waste of money to keep the pump going, if you ask me. Just let the whole damn thing freeze so I can buy skates and learn to stand on ice without breaking my nose.


So it's in this kind of weather that I found myself stumbling home from the Georgetown Safeway - up there on my best-Safeways-ever list next to the SuperSafeway in Menlo Park, CA, by the way - at midnight tonight after trying to be productive but failing miserably. (I recently discovered the brilliant show Louie, starring one of my favorite comics, Louis C.K. If you love Seinfeld, you'll definitely enjoy this.)

Sweater, jacket, hood, Thinsulate gloves, and Lil' Wayne on, I made the treacherous ten-minute walk uphill home. I hadn't gone fifty feet when I saw a girl in five-inch heels in the bushes, fumbling around, evidently looking for her phone.

At first, I thought nothing of it. Then I realized what time of year it is.

The Georgetown undergrads have finals next week…which means all of them are out drinking right now. And this poor girl was definitely not ready (or hella ready, depending) for her exams. (Side note: Georgetown undergrads get TWO-hour final exams? Sack up.)

I stood and watched as she got her phone, stood up, take one step forward, then four steps sideways; down to the curb again she went. At this point, I was dead tired and just wanted to get home, but it just seemed plain wrong to leave her, especially considering how ridiculously little she was wearing, and not just because of the frigid weather.

I went up to her and, as if I were talking to my senile uncle, yelled slowly and clearly to her face: "HEY. HOW ARE YOU GETTING HOME?" Not surprisingly, she mumbled something incoherent, then pulled out her phone and miraculously dialed her friend. She tried to talk to her, but seeing how hopelessly that tactic was working, I grabbed the phone and asked her if she knew where this poor soul was supposed to go.

"Well, her dorm is on 35th and Prospect. How far are you from there?"
"About three-quarters of a mile."
"Jesus."
"I think you're going to have to ask for bigger help than even he can give at this point."
"Um…okay, is there a way for her to get to my place?"
"Your place better be less than 50 feet from here."

It turns out her address was about two miles away, in Foggy Bottom.

"Tell you what. I'll stay with her to make sure she's okay, I'll hail her a cab, and I'm sending her to your place."

I turned back to Drinky, who at this point was sitting on the steps, being a surprisingly good girl.

"HEY. HEY. LISTEN TO ME. HOW MUCH CASH DO YOU HAVE?"

Now, if you were a passer-by and heard a shady-looking, hooded guy yell that to a random, gorgeous drunk girl sitting crumpled on the sidewalk, you probably should have called the cops. Fortunately, nobody was around for that potentially hazardous mistake to happen. Definitely one of the rare times that my lack of mental filter did NOT get me into trouble.

Just great. She had two bucks left, the rest of it undoubtedly sitting happily in the cash register at Gin and Tonic.

I stood with her while we waited a beacon to drive by. Meanwhile, I made small talk with her just to keep her from stumbling around so she wouldn't break her damn ankles in those ridiculous heels. At last, a cab driver pulled over for us, so I explicitly told him the address and cross-streets three times, then stupidly handed him far too much of my own cash to make him promise me that he would personally make sure she got INSIDE that address instead of just dropping her off in the cold.

As I walked the rest of the way home, I thought back on what had just transpired. Did I just do something responsible? Me? The same guy who cannonballed into the five-foot pool at Disneyland with cell phone still in his pants pocket, resulting in the need for a new phone and lots of ibuprofen? The same guy who yelled out crass slurs so inappropriate in the workplace that he should've gotten fired then and there? The same guy who never, ever went to organic chemistry lecture and thought he would be just fine? Him?

I felt proud of myself for a minute. I had just done something definitively "grown-up." I looked back on my time in college, thinking about how many times I had stupidly stumbled home by myself shitfaced after some shady house parties with jungle juice made of God-knows-what.

But then all that fuzzy, warm feeling went away as I realized, "Oh wait. I did that, like, TWO WEEKS AGO."
---
"All you boys are ten years old and will always be ten years old. I would know – I married one." – LNR