I’m a grandma. A 19-year-old, sratty as fuck grandma. Not an actual grandma– I don’t even have my own little yet. But I am, unfortunately, a grandma nonetheless. A grandma who cringes at the thought of pounding shots and leaving my bed past 10 p.m.
I wasn’t always this way. On Bid Day, I ran to my new home with a bid in one hand and a broken wedge in the other. Two hundred new sisters waited, ready to welcome me into (hopefully) loving arms. The sounds of high pitched screams and a Justin Bieber song swirled together in the background as girls and glitter invaded my personal space. As an overwhelming number of girls greeted me with hugs, it was in that moment where I had an epiphany: Greek life was definitely for me.
After a day filled with new names, new faces and awkwardly trying to make new friends, the real fun began: fraternity rush parties. Everyone on my campus knew that freshmen sorority girls weren’t supposed fuck with fraternity rush parties. But seriously, who actually listens to that rule? That’s right, no one. So my temporary big rallied a group together, and the six of us headed out. We stopped at a shot book party where I downed three shots of tequila, and learned the accuracy of the phrase “One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.” As someone who never drank in high school, just the mere smell of alcohol knocked me on my ass, so those three measly shots knocked my ass right to the ground.
The rest of the night is now a distant, blurry memory. I remember stumbling around outside, mumbling to myself, and stupidly telling every girl I saw that I looooved her. After three hours of a blackened blur, ya girl sat herself in front of a toilet and cried all night about her most recent ex. The thought of that night still makes me shudder.
So the next morning, as I laid in my bed, I had a deep, hungover conversation with myself. While Greek life was definitely for me, the party life… not so much. From that day forward, I vowed never to drink again (as most of us do after every hangover). I planned to stick to it, no matter how much FOMO I would experience.
Occasionally, I would go out with some of my best friends and make a drunken fool of myself. But as my freshman year started to wind down, the hype of partying faded away. When someone asked if I wanted to pregame and head out to a frat party, I always made up an excuse about homework, or family, or just insisted I was dying from the plague. Anything that could get me out of standing in a dark basement with shitty alcohol and even shittier guys who I knew I could never take seriously.
Every Friday from then on, you could find me in my full-sized bed, pantsless, wearing zero makeup and probably eating pizza with a bottle of Diet Coke while watching Gossip Girl. And that’s how I evolved from a partying, alcoholic new member to a seasoned, sober grandma. While you put on makeup, I sit in my bed. While you take shots, I shove my face with cheese sticks. While you grind on frat boys in sketchy basements, I proclaim my love to my dorm room bed. While you roll in at 1 a.m., I’m knocked by 10 p.m.
But to each her own, right? You enjoy Thirsty Thursdays, I enjoy being a slug who doesn’t leave my room for 12 hours. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the occasional frat party as much as your average sorority girl. But given a choice, I will always choose pizza and my bed over wet floors and bad music. But who’s to say you won’t see me drunk on some good hooch and grinding all over the fraternity president next weekend? That’s the thing with us grandmas. You never really know what to expect, or when we’ll come out of our shell. .
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