A big group of ~20 of us went away for the long weekend to a lake cabin in New Hampshire. As these things usually go, I drove a full car of people there and back. On the way up, I had zero excitement. Instead of talking to my whole car of passengers, I wanted to blast indie rock and cry loud sobbing cries from my gut about College Ed.
Adding insult to injury, two of my three passengers were friends whom I had actively tried to avoid for the last couple of weeks because they've recently started to seriously grate on my nerves. But the trip organizer didn't know that. He likely thought he was doing me a favor by putting my friends in my car as opposed to the alternative of random fringe acquaintances.
I drank very little the whole weekend and mostly sat in the background listening to others chatter and banter and play drinking games. One guy, Mish (50% of the car crew who has been annoying me), commented at some point about how quiet and pensive I seemed, compared to my "normal" self.
I wanted to slap him and scream, "Just who do you think you are?? How dare you claim to know my 'normal' self. You've only known me for a year - there are so many sides of me you can't even begin to know."
I made it a point to be out on the water as much as possible. Sailboats are fast and quiet, canoe paddles rhythmically melodic, and even the whirring of a motorboat engine drowns out all other noise and ironically creates its own sense of serenity because I didn't have to be in anyone else's world but my own. All of them were perfect balances of peace amidst distractions, and my mood gradually improved through the weekend, and I thought about College Ed less and less.
On Saturday though, I did drink a lot. Per tradition for four years now (though this is my first year on the trip), on the Saturday of each cabin trip, everyone plays a silly drinking game involving beers in cans. When someone finishes his/her beer, the empty can gets duct taped to his/her accumulated "Magician's Staff," essentially all of the empty cans of beers that person has gone through up until that point. Plenty of smack talk ensues, and each person carries with them their "staff" as a constant public record of the size of their dick.
Only silly boys can come up with silly games like this.
Nevertheless, I duct taped my empty beer cans together and amassed an empire - more than anyone had ever seen for a girl, and more than most of the boys had on their "staffs" by the end of the night. And I have to say, regardless of how blue I may have felt going into this, that many beers just cannot keep me down. Silly drinking games exist for a reason: they're silly and completely entertaining, especially when drunk.
Until cleanup time on Monday.
Our 15 or so staffs of ~20 duct taped beer cans each all sat in a heap outside, and we had to trash them all.
"Wait, why wouldn't we recycle these?" I asked.
"We can't," someone said, "They have duct tape all over them."
"But we can take all the duct tape off!" I protested.
"Ummm, are you crazy Seine? Do you know how many cans there are, and how long that would take?"
"I don't care!" I pleaded. "There are 20 of us here. We put the staffs together, we can take them apart to recycle."
But no one else cared. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. I wanted to cry all over again, and thoughts of College Ed came flooding back. And then thoughts of Broadway. Broadway would have never played this game. And if he were with a group of people who did, he would make them take all the duct tape off to recycle the cans.
I realized then and there that I could never date any of the boys in this group, no matter how tempted I might have been at times (e.g. Special Friend) and no matter how many of them might be interested in me (I think 3 currently, but I'm also the only single girl in the group right now).
I want a boy with enough care and kindness to protest trashing duct taped cans. I want a boy who feels enough responsibility to not want to play this game anymore unless there were a better solution. I'll even take the boy who stands up out of the crowd to support me when I voice an opposition to want to recycle.
None of these boys are any of that. Ultimately, it's not about the cans or duct tape or even recycling, but it's about how much care they actually feel toward the world around them. To these boys, at least now, the world is still mostly just fun and games.
And I'm done with considering that. But at the very least, now I know what I want.
