After work today I decided to undergo a solitary adventure.
I went to go audition for a choir I found online by googling “recent college graduate desperate for other college graduate friends and also a non-karaoke musical outlet”.
That’s not actually what I looked up, it’s just what I was thinking while I was looking things up.
Anyway, after my audition I had an hour to kill before choir rehearsal, so I wandered aimlessly and ended up walking into a mostly-deserted bar.
When I came in, the manager behind the counter looked confused and asked hesitantly if I wanted food. I said no. “Are you with that group over there?” he offered, indicating four Asians sitting in a corner. He was really trying hard to find a logical explanation to my being there alone. I offered none. “No, I am by myself,” I said defiantly. “And I want a drink.”
"Ah… really? Um.. so I guess you want a shot or something?" Good grief. I hadn’t anticipated this kind of reaction. It’s like he assumed I was seriously depressed and must want to drown my sorrows at being alone in vodka. It was also like he was scared of catching "loner" by talking to me too freely. (But the other dudes at the bar were by themselves too, weren’t they?? What gives? I guess loner guys are more acceptable than loner girls at bars. SMH!)
So I took upon myself the challenge of proving that one can be a socially adept female and still go to bars by oneself (without straight up saying something like, “Don’t worry, my solitary appearance is neither contagious nor malignant). We had a good, normal conversation and the manager started to relax, and he and I ended up coaching another guy there who wasn’t so socially adept on how to be more so, and we all became good friends. I departed with a merry wave, promising to come back soon for karaoke night.
After that I realized I probably shouldn’t go to my first practice smelling like Jack and Coke, so I stopped at a food mart to buy mints. I debated with the cashier on whether “wintercool” or “peppermint” was a more legitimate choice, and we eventually settled on wintercool because the packaging matched my teal scarf. It was fun banter, but then we got into a heated argument over whether or not student government is a tool of university administration, so I left yelling over my shoulder “NO IT’S NOT”.
Once I got to Cal’s campus, I decided to check out the little signs people posted on the notice board. This particular one grabbed my attention:
As was the case at UCLA whenever I saw one of these, I immediately got really excited. Shit, $15 an hour to do a study?? And then I realized that I’m a working adult now and I already get paid $15 an hour (to go on tumblr… hheehe)
I feel like it’s going to take a long time for me to stop feeling like a student.
Anyway, after that really random tangent (sorry), I finally made it to rehearsal!
The ladies handing out music at the door saw I was by myself and kept referring me to a “loner’s packet” and I was getting a little annoyed, because is it really that big of a deal to come alone to the first choir practice, and then I realized they were saying “loaner’s packet.”
Then I walked into the rehearsal room and there were about a hundred and twenty people and almost everyone was seventy-something years old and retired.
At that point, however, I was just going with the flow. I made lots of senior citizen friends (it may have helped that I was still mildly inebriated), butchered some French and Italian lyrics, and gulped down the rest of my cool, winter mints.
Anyway, the lesson I learned today is that you can be by yourself, graduated, activityless, and friendless and still have an interesting Monday. It’s just about aggressively pursuing an interesting Monday, ya know? Don’t let people make you feel bad for being alone- ask those haters if they’ve tried it, because sometimes, it’s really quite fun.
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