Drinking and Dialing

Last Sunday, a friend and I had one of those impromptu afternoons that leads to nothing but trouble. We started with Bloody Marys at our bar and then hit a street fest. Too much heat and too many beers from a cooler keg put us into fine form. Until we decided that people should join us and we started using my cell phone with a vengeance. What is it about alcohol that makes a person think the phone is something that he/she should be using?

It was bad enough when I was in college and I would stumble home drunk and use my dorm phone to call everyone I knew. (You could always tell a drinking night by looking at my phone bill…the calls would be 3:01 AM, 3:03 AM, 3:05 AM…) The advent of the cell phone made it worse. You no longer have to wait until you get home to make those fatal phone calls. The cell phone allows you to embarrass yourself while the night is still young.

I unfortunately have taken to drunk-typing as well. At first, it was emails. Embarrassing emails. Crazy long notes filled with thought-provoking pontifications—or so I thought. Emails that you find in your sent items a few days later and wish that you had never hit the “Send” button.

Then the text-messaging cell phones were invented and all hell broke loose. I remember when I first discovered the value of the text message. It was St. Patrick’s Day 2002 and we were barhopping after the parade. Since we were on the move, we used text messages to coordinate locations with people as they joined us throughout the day. It was a brilliantly funny, libation-filled day. It was also the beginning of the end for me. No longer can I trump the “drunk” excuse for dialing a person at 4 AM. Now I have to excuse away messages that I have no control over deleting.

I’ve come to realize that sometimes, I am funny after a few cocktails and that sometimes people do want to hear from me…though, sometimes, they really don’t want to talk to me either—at least not at 4:00 AM. I guess it is finding that happy medium.

PS: As it is I am writing this after a few (okay, several) libations.