Big Night

I am Deb, office worker, walker of dog, washer of dishes, mower of lawn, doer of laundry, hanger of curtains, hauler outer of trash! Leaper of tall buildings! All in a single day!
All right, fine, I am not a leaper of buildings, not even ones made of Legos.
But I am feeling pretty darned good about myself at the moment, as I really did accomplish all of those other things today. My acute awareness of how good I feel makes me realize that I haven't been feeling all that peppy over the past few days. I felt lazy. And surly. There was a reason, of course. A girly, hormonal reason. (Any guys who might have been reading this have just clicked over to Mafia Wars or CNN.) And maybe I was recovering from my big night out last weekend.
On Saturday I did something I hadn't done in years: I went to a bar. My friend Jan was fired up about a blues band playing in town and invited me to join her. "If you can stay awake that long," she said, not unkindly, knowing my propensity for nodding off around 10 most nights. The band was starting at 10. Yikes.
But you know, I was tired of being weekend on the sofa girl. Yes, I said bravely. Yes, I will abandon my traditional popcorn and "Law and Order" rerun in favor of a night out.
It felt strange, but not uncomfortable, to be out late in a bar on a Saturday night. The strangest part was the fact that Jan and I were old enough to be the mothers of three-quarters of the clientele. Not to mention the staff. The girls were for the most part uniformly pretty, wearing either short, wispy summer dresses or tight jeans and foot-killing high heels. The boys' fashions ran the gamut from camo hats and Carhartt T's to suits and fedoras. Most of the girls carried purses the size of saddle bags. Almost everyone carried cell phone and checked them often, the pale light of the screens cutting through the darkness of the room.
Jan and I nursed a couple of Cokes, enjoyed the music, chatted, and watched as young men and women who didn't look old enough to drive, let alone drink, progress from tipsy to hammered as the hours passed.
"I'M SO DRUNK! I'M SO DRUNK" a girl chanted like a mantra, her voice reaching its upper registers. Jan and I grinned at each other; yup, we used to be her. Another girl swayed alone on the dance floor, moving when the music played, but not moving to the music.
A small cluster of young women danced jubilantly, each of them wearing a glow in the dark bracelet, the kind with liquid inside that you snap to activate. The only other place I'd ever seen those was on little kids on the Fourth of July.
"There ought to be a law," I said loudly to Jan over the music, "If you're young enough to wear a glow bracelet you're too young to be out at a bar."
Not all of the people were drunk. In fact, most of the young people were noisily social, wandering through the room, exchanging hugs (girls) and fist bumps (guys). I felt not old, but removed. This was a kind of fun I'd never had. I drank to get drunk, period, right from the beginning. There were fun times, but it didn't take long before a night at the bars meant me getting so wasted that it wasn't fun anymore. Ask any of my friends who remember my crying jags, or the time I got thrown out of the Alibi because I passed out on a table and broke a glass.
This night was a different kind of fun, the tamer, manageable kind. I'm grateful for the indescribable amount of fun I've has since I've been sober. Let the kids have their day, God bless them and keep them safe. I've been there, and I'm happy to still be here. And pretty happy to say that I stayed awake till 2 a.m.!