Remember last post when my neck was feeling lumpy? Well, it turns out I had mumps, (even though I was vaccinated against it. wtf?) I was told in the doctor's office that even vaccinated people have a 5% chace of getting it and apparently there's an epidemic going around the London universities. So I was kicked out of halls and sent back to my parents' house where I was quarantined for a week. Lucky me. On the plus side, I now have immunity for life and the doctor also told me that in this case it was good to be a woman, since mumps is usually very painful for the testicles.
So once I was released into the wild again on Tuesday, I was invited to Sergio's birthday party along with all the first years in halls. Before we left, we all went to Matt's kitchen to have a drink, except I was trying to take it easy because of the whole recovering from a contageious disease thing.
It was probably because I was taking it easy that I could easily watch the developement of my friend's problems.
While Suze was out of the room, Kirsty and Becky were giggling as they poured more vodka into her cranberry juice, and then neglected to tell her what they'd done when she came back. What with drinking games and everything, it worked out that Suze must have drunk about a third of a bottle before we even left, and she is even shorter than me. The glass of ice water I handed her at the bar didn't stop her throwing it all up in the toilets while Kirsty and I tried to take of her. All the time, I was thinking at Kirsty, 'This is your fault, you were the one that tipped that bottle into her glass. That's not right.' I kept waiting for her to offer to take Suze home, but she never did. So that's how I ended up trying to reassure the cab driver that my friend wouldn't be puking in his cab, rummaging in Suze's handbag for her key, trying to persude her to eat some carbs... and back in my room by 11pm.
Discussing it with Nina, (who is back home from Oxford) the next day while we spent gift vouchers on makeup, we came to the conclusion that a lot of first years have an attitude to alcohol that's unnecessary and self destructive. There's a line, right? There's teasing and cajoling, like 'Come on, let's do another shot. Tequilla or sambucca?' and then there's pouring spirits into someone's drink while they're out of the room, or doing what Matt has often done to me, which is press a glass against my mouth and tip so I have no choice but to swallow or spill it down my front.
'God I hate it,' Nina compained. 'The fucking rowers do it all the time. They go out and get totally wasted and play these stupid drinking games. Then they come into college the next day and they're like "Yeah, I got shit-faced last night and got up in time to come to this tutorial and answer essay questions." And I'm like "Great, you're smart, and you're good at destroying your liver. Frankly, that still doesn't validate your existence."'
( crap to fun in three nights )
... & here is my cat, who always finds the place with sun + bed.
