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So, Hopfully this shows up as a post & not a reply to someones post. Iv been struggling with this site :/ so heres my blog…
Bottoms up?? Or not….
So after week long of debating what to “blog” about… and attempting to make it something worth reading…it wasn’t till this afternoon that I felt like I had something I really wanted to share.
Today I spent my day on Clearwater Beach with some of my friends and since some colleges are still going on Spring Break, the beach was beyond crowded, and off course there was ridiculous traffic (lucky for me I live down here so it’s a 10 min walk :p ). Being the people watcher that I am, it gets interesting on a crowded beach. Unfortunately, sitting behind us today (like 2 feet away from my head) were three (very loud & obnoxious) high school girls (that couldn’t have possibly been a day older than 16) that were drinking along with two nasty college guys that were trying to convince them to go with them. Out of the three girls, even though they were all wasted, the one couldn’t tolerate her liquor as well as the other two, and needless to say, was crying, and yelling random things to the people around her…sadly her friends were also incoherent…but not to the level of the one girl. The one guy was grabbing on her one friend asking if she was in high school and where she was from, followed by his horrible pick up lines of “leme tell you a secret ma, I think your so sexy, no other girl is as hott as you out here…blah blah…leme take you back to our room…” (trying to f*ck underage drunk girls…not cool, at all). Now, I don’t know what ended up happening to the girls (can only hope for the best & that those jerks didn’t convince any of them to go back to their room, since they were obviously out of sorts)…besides the fact that the one guy was also drunk…tripped over me lol walked (more like wobbled) like 4 feet…then started coughing, and spitting up junk.. gross. Looked like he was throwing up, but it wasn’t full blown…(not that you all needed to know that, if your reading)…but turning around and seeing the scared look on the girls face was so sad…till she started throwing up everywhere, and yea I had to turn away.. and we moved our towels. And her two friends were blowing her off, hitting on the guys…not knowing what they were saying. Now first off, let me throw in a disclaimer that I am not against drinking, (and yes iv been drunk…on multiple occasions…buttttt this stories not about me..so moving on) Its just sad how people feel that they have to drink and get drunk for either acceptance, or to loosen up or what ever their reason maybe. Also, you end up looking beyond idiotic being that wasted. I have a lot of friends though that feel like they need alcohol to have a good time when they’re out, which I disagree with. I thinks its fine to drink when you’re having a good time ect., but you don’t NEED the drink to have a good time. (Now here’s a little history on my childhood, but I promise it will all link together with the alcohol story by the end ) Growing up my family has been in the hotel business, and we had a few hotels on Clearwater Beach. Ever since I can remember, I’d spend a lot of time tagging along my dad, mom, uncle, grandfather ect, on the weekends, after school free time, holidays, and spring break running between our hotels & restaurant, pretending to be the little boss lol. Being raised in that environment I got to see first hand the working system, how it is to run businesses, and I believe that’s where my love for people watching began. I remember watching servers and other employees being hired and fired. Servers that would come in for the morning shift smelling like booze from the night before, red in the face or just too high to work. I remember learning bout how bartenders can cheat the bar ect or how some employees had to have a certain amount of their paycheck deducted to be sent automatically for child-care since they weren’t responsible to do it on their own. But most of all I remember, sitting at one of the hotels front desks during spring break, and watching under aged college kids coming in and out with liquor. One morning, I saw an under aged girl, wrapped up in a bed sheet in the front lobby in tears, stating how she was intoxicated the night before, date rapped, and that all her belongings were gone…not even her clothes left. Stories such as this one and so many more, from finding all sorts of bongs in rooms, to bathtubs filled with empty beer cans, vomit on the carpets, items stolen ect. I remember seeing guys shouting from the tops of the balconies, welcoming random girls to come up drink and party, along with girls hanging over the balconies flashing random guys ect. Though this is all the usual for “college spring break” as a little kid, it was rather shocking and vowed that I would never turn out like these people that I would see day in and day out. (Though, I didn’t hold to my promise…)
Anyways, back to the drunk girl on the beach, just seeing her face today reminded me of my first time being highly intoxicated and how insane it was…(total different story for another time…) and it made me put down my vodka & watermelon filled cup today, just because I was really grossed out. It also made me think, that that’s someone’s lil baby girl…and as I looked around and saw families and children playing, it made me wonder, how the grand majority of the sweet small children, will eventually land up in this girls place, and what kind of example some of us set…Its just disappointing on how our system is, and how much worse things are going to get by the time I have children, and I certainly don’t want my daughter making all of the mistakes I made (which makes me understand why my parents can be rather strict at times), but I guess that’s the only way to learn. Perhaps it’s just me that sees it like this though. Don’t think of me as a hypocrite though, I drink and have drank my share…we all have stories to tell…and I’m not trying to preach that drinking is bad, its just sad when were falling over throwing up and not remembering things the next day (and having a food aversion to anything flavored similar to our drink from the night before…) –a lot of people find it funny, but it really isn’t. *(also as I write this, I’m sitting with my laptop on my balcony, and I can hear my neighbor Emily two houses down fighting outside with her boyfriend…her older sister had died 2 years ago from a car accident involving drinking…and yet Emily continues in her sisters footsteps, not learning from something that major in her life…anyways)
Sometimes I wonder if the USA drinking age has anything to do with the tendencies here of getting drunk or if its just part of the American Culture. Being that I’m Greek, wine and alcohol is a part of our culture. In Greece, there is no real set drinking age unless you are in a strict club in Athens, where the drinking age is…17. Maybe because alcohol is so readily available there, there isn’t as big of a problem with alcohol poisoning. While attending one of my study abroad meetings at UT, the professor lecturing was talking about how the biggest problem with study abroad is that the countries in Europe are hesitant to accept American students in apartments (since dorms aren’t as common, depending on where your going) due to the way American students do not know how to treat alcohol as a social means vs binging. I found some facts on our school website actually about college students and alcohol…
- college students spend $6 billion more on alcohol than regular drinks and books combined.
- 42% of college students binge drink
- 56% of those are between 18 and 20
- over 400,000 students had unprotected sex after drinking
- estimated 100,000 had sex intoxicated unable to consent
- over 300,000 students each year need emergency health care for alcohol overdoes
- over 30,000 are hospitalized for alcohol poisoning
So just as a re-cap, I’m not here to state whether drinking is right or wrong, or how much is too much (because it varies from each person). Just throwing my feelings out there for the day based on what I saw at the beach, and how over I am of people finding it hilarious when other people are piss drunk, because its not funny for the person that’s dealing with it and the consequences that can arise.
Comment by roupaki88 — March 30, 2008 @ 6:26 pm |