Shots and Social Distancing

I always thought I’d celebrate my 21st birthday drinking cheap alcohol at a grimy 6th Street bar surrounded by a bunch of strangers. I’d be sweaty and a little nauseous, but dancing with my friends and screaming to songs at the top of my lungs. The next morning I would nurse a raging hangover with Red Bull and McDonald’s hash browns. Instead, I woke up with the sun and went to work (still with a Red Bull and hash browns) and drank a margarita on my living room floor after class that night. It’s not what I planned, but nothing seems to be going the way we planned these days.

I know it’s insensitive to be upset about something so menial, but nevertheless, I was sad. People are dying and I was sad because I couldn’t drunkenly call an Uber after going down the Aquarium slide one too many times. I had romanticized the idea of incoherently spending my birthday getting drunk and having the “college experience” when in the grand scheme of things, it means so little.

So much pressure is put on your 21st birthday and your first legal drink, but these high expectations almost ensure your night will fall short. The added chaos of the pandemic made the whole experience odd. No one can celebrate birthdays to the full extent. Bars are closed, very few restaurants have indoor seating, and most people are afraid to venture outside in general. Since I am one of those people, my night had no way of living up to the expectations I had dreamt up in my head since freshman year of college.

I keep waiting for things to return to normal. Hoping that I can plan a 21st birthday redo, and go to Las Vegas or New Orleans and have the one crazy night I was hoping for. After watching my friends graduate through a video last semester, I fully believed things would be back to how they were before, but I was so wrong. Waiting for things to be normal again could take years. We really have been forced into a new normal of masks, social distancing, and day-drinking on the couch. While the latter may not be a bad thing for a freshly turned 21-year-old, it does put a damper on the college experience. 

While in the moment I was upset that I spent my day in a big t-shirt rather than a sequin dress and heels I couldn’t really walk in, when I look back I’m grateful. If this had happened any other year, I would still be upset. In spite of everything, quarantine brought me some of my best friends. You really get to know someone when you’re locked in your apartment and sharing a couple hundred square feet for months on end. We’ve cried on the kitchen floor, eaten ice cream at 3AM on the roof and stayed up all night watching shitty coming-of-age movies. Those simple moments are what have been the best in the past eight months. 

So, no. My 21st birthday isn’t a crazy story I’ll tell when I’m older, but it was still an incredible night. I’ll be able to tell my kids about how I lived through a pandemic and met my best friends because of it. I’ll tell them about the other wild and crazy nights we had, but I’ll be sure to tell them about playing games and drinking margaritas on our thrifted living room rug for my first legal drink.

Staying safe for yourself and others is more important than going to bars and while it may seem lame and underwhelming, when you look back, you’ll see that those late nights on the couch eating popcorn with your roommates were your favorite.

By Emma Bittner

Rom-Com fanatic and coffee connoisseur with a little bit of “I wanna save the world” in me.