One of the major reasons I write this blog is so I can share valuable information that is useful and pertinent for University of Maryland students to know.
Okay not really. But one really awesome tip that most people don’t know about is that you can request a mid-year housing transfer to pretty much anywhere you want to live on campus. I’m assuming most people don’t realize this, or else no one would spend the spring of their sophomore year on North Campus.
Fortunately, Lauren and I are On It and we put in for a transfer from our shithole in Hagerstown to probably the nicest place on South Campus: a two person apartment with kitchen and bathroom, ground floor, right across from the bus stop, and literally as close as you can get to Route One (which was super-convenient for those winter-weather walks of shame).
We decided to break in our new place by throwing Kim a 20th birthday party on the first night back. We invited about 30 people, including my little sister Heather who’d helped me move in earlier that day. We had cake, lots of alcohol, and the ubiquitous Birthday Bitch cup:
Camille made a couple trays of jello shots, and she brought over the extra plastic shotglasses to use for the party.
We started drinking at 9 pm.
By 10 pm everyone was blacked out.
At 10:30 the RAs came.
At first, it took us awhile to process that our party was being busted, so our initial reaction was: “HEY WE JUST MOVED IN!! COME IN TAKE SOME SHOTS!!!” However, once we realized that these were not Potential New Friends but, in fact, Authority Figures Who Could Get Us Kicked Off Campus, we quickly sprung into action: I threw the alcohol in the oven (because who would think to look in the oven?) while Lauren hid.
Eventually though, we had to come out talk to the RA’s, at which point we told them:
……..I have no idea. All I remember is running into the kitchen, grabbing a half-full fifth of Pink Lemonade Burnetts, and dramatically pouring it on the ground to demonstrate that we Weren’t Actually Drinking. (It was actually pretty funny during our disciplinary hearing later when the Resident Director asked Lauren and I if we could describe our interactions with the RAs. Answer: no.)
*Actually, it wasn’t that funny at the time because we were almost kicked off campus, but I digress*
Ironically, the RAs weren’t actually there to break up the party, but to ask us to move the bags of trash we’d left outside our door (oops.) Once we “interacted” with them, however, it was pretty obvious that we were breaking about 50 different residence hall violations. Instead of dealing with us then though, the RAs just told us to break it up and make everyone disperse. So we decided to pack up the alcohol and move the party over to Ben, Jason & Matt’s apartment.
Unfortunately, although hiding the alcohol in the oven was a stroke of genius, I’d been so caught up in the moment that I forgot to put the caps on the bottles. Result: about half a handle of alcohol was spilled in the bottom of our oven. Yes, alcohol is flammable.
Whatever. We headed over to BJM’s apartment, where I took more shots and tried valiantly to steal a stuffed monkey. Then we decided to go to the bars. About halfway there, it became evident that Kim was too drunk to walk, so Ben and Cam took her back. Heather, Jason, Justin, and I headed to Cornerstone, but Heather didn’t have a fake. Unfortunately the bouncer wouldn’t accept my suggestion to “just let this one count for both of us”; fortunately, he merely denied us admission instead of confiscating my ID.
So Heather and I went to Turtle. And all was proceeding swimmingly, until I realized that I had dropped my Coach ID case, which held all my stuff. And I mean ALL my stuff: student ID, fake ID, debit card, license, car keys, and about 40$. I started freaking out and looking around for it, when someone tapped me on the shoulder:
“Did you drop your clutch?”
“OMG yes have you seen it??”
“Yea, the DJ’s got it.”
I rushed up to the DJ booth, and thank god, the DJ had my ID case. It was a miracle! I was so relieved, and went back to being blissfully blacked out…
…until I realized that I’d lost my ID case again. Oops. So I did what anyone would do in this situation: I went up to the DJ booth again. Unfortunately, this time they didn’t have it. Fuck.
Then I had a brilliant solution: if I just turned off the music for a few moments, the DJ could make an announcement and everyone could help me look for my ID case—why, we’d find it in no time! Genius!
I turned off the music.
Within seconds, a bouncer grabbed me. “Nooo what are you doing?” I howled. I started to cry. “Put me down!” The bouncer didn’t put me down. He carried me, sobbing, out of the bar. “Helppppp!!”
The bouncer deposited me outside the bar, where I sat against the brick wall with my head tucked into my knees, freezing and crying despondently. People kept coming up to me to ask if I was okay, including a guy who I think was the owner of the bar. “No I’m not okay,” I wailed.
I’m not sure how long I was there, but this nice guy David who used to live in Hagerstown eventually found me. He walked me back, somehow got me into my dorm, put me to bed, and sat by me as I sobbed myself to sleep…
…then I woke up the next morning with my sister in bed beside me. Oh, right…my sister.
“Oh my god, I am so, SO sorry!” I exclaimed.
“Where were you!!” Heather demanded.
“Well I dropped all my stuff, turned off the music—
“—oh that’s why the music went off!—”
“—got carried out of the bar, started crying, and this guy I know took me home. So how did you get home?”
As it turned out, when Heather couldn’t find me and I wasn’t answering my phone (it was dead), she started calling everyone she knew in College Park. Finally she got ahold of OtherHeather, and she and Jason got her from Turtle and took her back to the apartment, where she hung out until Matt and Justin walked her home.
So at least my little sister hadn’t gotten kidnapped, raped, or murdered after I abandoned her at a bar. But we still had a major logistical problem: Heather needed to drive the car home, but I had lost the car keys, which were attached to my ID case. I had no choice but to borrow Lauren’s car to drive home and pick up an extra set of keys. I told my parents that I’d locked the keys in the trunk, which surprisingly they believed.
On the way back, I stopped at the nice Giant in my town (as opposed to the ghetto-ass Giant in Greenbelt) to stock up on food for the apartment. I bought all my weird vegetarian staples: hummus, tabouli, veggie burgers, soymilk, feta cheese, spinach, frozen mango, etc. The total came to about $120, and I’d grabbed a checkbook from my house to pay, since my debit card was currently MIA.
“Can I please see your license?” asked the cashier.
“Oh, sorry, my license is missing,” I explained. “I lost all my cards, which is why I’m writing a check instead of using my debit card.”
“We need to see identification to accept a personal check.”
“Let’s see,” I said, rustling through my purse, “I have an insurance card…and a paycheck?”
“I’m sorry, but that won’t work. We can’t take checks without a photo driver’s license.”
Dammit. “I’m really sorry about this,” I said, “but I don’t have any way to pay. I can’t pay for this.” Shit, now I would have no food. And someone was going to have to put this away. I started to walk away—
“I’ve got it,” said the guy behind me, waving his credit card. He was a wealthy-looking businessman in an overcoat accompanied by two kids.
“Oh thank you so much,” I gushed. “I really appreciate it. Is it okay if I just make this personal check out to you then?”
“No, I mean I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Wait, he was going to pay for it? “No, no I can’t let you—I’ll write you a check…”
“I mean it,” he said firmly. “I’ve got it. Don’t worry.”
“Ohmygosh,” I stammered. “Thank you. I cannot thank you enough. Thank you so, so much.”
I was literally trembling as I gathered my bags and walked out of the store. Someone had just paid for $122 of my groceries. Who the hell does that? Under normal circumstances I might think that maybe the guy had the hots for me, but who was I kidding myself: I hadn’t showered, I was wearing a sweatshirt, puffy vest, and Uggs, and I still had mascara streaks all over my face from the cry-fest last night. Possibly the guy thought I was a despondent single mother or a homeless person and felt sorry for me, although I’m not sure how many homeless people purchase gourmet mozzarella and hearts of palm. But more likely he was just a rich, busy guy to whom the $120 was worth less than the waiting time it’d cost him while the cashiers put my stuff back.
Or maybe I am just incredibly, incredibly lucky.
Hypothesis I-was-born-under-a-lucky-star was substantiated when I finally got back to the apartment, checked my facebook, and found a message from someone who had found my ID case. Later that night I got it back with EVERYTHING intact, sans the $40, which I didn’t really care about. (And I came out ahead anyway when you factor in the $120 I saved on groceries.)
Later that night, Lauren and I decided to take Nyquil so we could get a good night’s sleep before our first day of classes. We couldn’t find any medicine cups, so we decided to use the leftover plastic shotglasses instead. I checked the label on the box to see how much liquid each shot glass held. That was when I had a relevation:
The shotglasses were 3 ounces. Normal shots are 1.5 ounces. We had been taking double shots all night. That was why everyone had blacked out and I had cried and screamed and lost all my stuff even though I didn’t feel like I was drinking anymore than usual.
Oops.
EPILOGUE: A couple weeks later, Lauren and I met for our disciplinary hearing with the Resident Director, an evil bitch who made Lauren cry. Unfortunately, she and her creepy husband also lived directly across the hall from us. We were put on probation until August 2011, and for the rest of the semester we were unjustly forced to pregame quietly in the kitchen with clear drinks such as Burnett’s Lime (which is actually very delicious). Fortunately now we live in Hartwick Towers, where we could hotbox the building and open a methlab in our kitchen if we so desired. But that’s another story…
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