St. Patrick's Day 2011

This past St. Patrick’s Day was exciting for two reasons. For one, this was the first St. Patrick’s Day I celebrated as a “legal alcohol consumer”; and two, I had the most eventful Irish holiday. To start off my morning, I woke up to my phone ringing at 4:00am. My old roommate was on the other end of the phone begging me to join her and three others at the local bar, Brennan’s around 6:00am. The problem: their plan was to beat the rush and be in line by 4:30am. I declined such insanity and went back to sleep.
Later that afternoon, I took my normal 12:00pm-1:00pm lunch break. Every Thursday I go to lunch with a good friend of mine, Eric. This Thursday was a bit different. Apparently when I went on break, there was some sort of weapon threat or warning going around campus. There were authorities everywhere and text messages were sent to students from Public Safety suggesting that each student barricade themselves. This message was sent in error, but Eric and I took advantage of the situation and went to get a drink at El Torito. This is where my day gets interesting.
After having a cocktail with Eric, we received a call that said campus was completely safe and we were okay to return. Buzzed from my Cadillac, I came back to work and carried out the rest of my day. At 5:02pm sharp, Eric and I met up again, only this time we were joined by two others. We went back to El Torito for happy hour and enjoyed approximately four margaritas each. Hey! They were only $3.00 and extremely strong. We departed El Torito around 7:30pm and continued our evening by going to Eric’s house. We invited more individuals over and began playing a drinking game called “Chandelier”.
This game involved red cups—the death of me.
That’s exactly what the night became. We continued to play, and I continued to lose. By this point it was about 9:00pm and the night had just begun. We all decided to stop at my brother’s house because he wanted us to participate in taking green shots of Svedka with him. We indulged in the free alcohol and chilled at his apartment for a while.
In order to keep everyone’s blood alcohol content levels high, we agreed to go to a bar in Culver City called Rush Lounge. Rush was the perfect place to be on St. Patrick’s Day. There was only a five minute wait to get into the actual bar and the drinks started flowing immediately. We danced and mingled at Rush until 2:00am. At that point, we were all heavily intoxicated and starving. Jack in the Box is so great after a long night of drinks and shots.
Silence filled the air of our car as soon as we pulled away from the drive through window practically swallowed our food. After arriving back to our friends house, I thought this was finally the end of my first official St. Patrick’s Day. Boy, was I wrong. The night continued until 5:00am with three rounds of beer pong. Had it not been for my body collapsing on me at 4:50am, I probably would have kept going.
I had a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day. You are probably wondering why I just told you about my drunken holiday, but there is a reason. Surprisingly enough, I learned something through my drunken night. I learned that upon embarking my 21st year of life, I have to enter with a mature mind and have consciousness of my surroundings. Yes, it’s fun to party and be belligerent from time to time, but I chose to write about my St. Patrick’s Day because I REMEMBER it. I was responsible; I had a designated driver throughout the night and even ensured that I only went to familiar places. Have fun, celebrate well, but stay safe!

-Brittnee Wadlington