It's been almost a month since my last post.
Bad blogger.
The first couple weeks after Hawaii I just didn't feel like writing anything. Perhaps it was the joy of being reunited with my children after our vacation...or not. Then I ran a 15k and wanted to write about that but it involved a Jello shot and so it didn't feel right to blog about that close to Easter.
Believe me, I've tried to write deep, soulful posts but it just doesn't seem to be my thing. Which is completely surprising for such a deep, soulful person such as myself.
But Easter is over so now I can freely write about Jello shots.
One recent Saturday I ran a local 15k race (which is 9.something miles for you uneducated Americans). It was absolutely beautiful weather. I saw some funny race signs along the way, including "Chuck Norris never ran a 15k" and "You think this is hard, you should try growing out bangs" and my new favorite, which is: Kanye thinks that Beyonce deserves your medal.
Lots of people cheering us on and handing out treats, including a guy making scrambled eggs and sausages and passing them out in little cups and on toothpicks. Then I saw a guy handing out little plastic condiment containers of Jello.
I love Jello. It's cool and delicious and fun. As I was running closer and contemplating whether or not I should grab one, the woman next to me exclaimed "Hell yeah!" and grabbed a container.
Finally, another adult who appreciates Jello as much as I do.
With that encouragement, I picked a blue one and slurped it as I ran.
It had that bitter, vodka-ish taste. Holy cow, was this a Jello shot? Soon after, I fervently hoped that my legs would continue to run for me because I cannot handle my alcohol. And especially vodka, which tastes the way rubbing alcohol smells.
So I had my first Jello shot was when I was 32 years old, at 9 am, while running. Despite the opportunity, I did not have any Jello shots during college. In fact, I was the designated driver when my friends and I would go to parties.
"What?" you say, "but you're so cool and hip."
Which is true but not in a frat party kind of way. Getting drunk wasn't my idea of a good time and neither was smoking pot, both of which seemed to turn perfectly fine people into morons. I also didn't want my friends to be faced with drunk driving at the end of the night. I had seen those after-school public service commercials and they were chilling. Cars colliding, tires screeching, side ponytails all askew.
I remember one party in particular. I had climbed into a car with my roommate and another friend or two and we drove to a frat party.
Spoiler alert: Frat parties aren't nearly as fun as movies make them out to be. Since I wasn't having the supposedly wonderful activity of getting hammered inside, I sipped a cup of water out on the deck and watched a spider spin a web. After a while, a guy came up to me and we started talking about spiders and their webs.
With hindsight, I realize that he was flirting with me but I didn't know it then. Finally, I thought, another person who appreciates the majestic art of nature. You'll notice that me assuming people appreciate the same things as I do is a trait I've always had, whether it be spider webs or Jello or Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Anyway, after my friends were sufficiently tipsy, we drove home.
Along with assuming things, I am also not very observant. I had failed to notice that the car we drove there was a stick shift and now I was expected to drive home.
I had never driven a stick shift before. Or even had ever really thought about them.
It was a tiny car, a hatchback Geo Metro. The size of the postage stamp. We had also somehow acquired a few more people so there were like 5 people in the back and 3 in front, including me and some guy who was pretty much sitting on the stick shift.
There I sat, completely sober, in a clown car crammed with intoxicated teenagers, trying to figure out what to do. Nobody was of much help to me, what with them not really remembering who they were at the moment. It was also a very hilly college town, which made for some rather reckless shifting on my part.
I don't really know how we got home without stalling or getting into an accident or being pulled over. Me sober trying to drive a stick shift was really not much better than a trashed teen who has the knowledge base.
Long story, well, long, that was the story of my first Jello shot.
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