Adults

So technically, I'm an adult. And most, if not all, of my friends are adults. Technically. Sometimes I don't feel like an adult, so I still look up to people who are older than me and more experienced in the real of life than I am. I have realized, however, that just because someone is older and more experienced than I am, doesn't mean that they are necessarily an example that I should follow.

So the other day was St. Patrick's day. Now I have nothing against St. Patrick's day, but I have never been super into it. I didn't even own a green shirt until this year, and would always get pinched because of it. I think it was because here in Santa Barbara, it isn't really a huge deal. I mean, sure, there are more people in the bars than usual, and more people walking around wearing green, but there are definitely more people ignoring the fact that it is a holiday, and continuing on with their menial lives. Nevertheless, one of my friends from out of the country had somehow convinced himself that St. Patrick's day was a huge deal, and had set his mind on celebrating it in style.

He is a couple years older than I am, and has some friends that are still older than him, and he had gotten a few of them together to go to some drinking in some bars downtown in celebration of this saint. (Ironic?)We arrived at "Joes Restaurant and Diner" to meet them, only to find that they were already a couple drinks in. There were an engaged couple that I had briefly met before, and another man that I hadn't met before. The couple was in their early thirties, and the man was 41.

Having grown up in the family that I did, I have been always surrounded by responsible, moral adults my entire life, even the adults from outside my family. These were no such adults. For the entire afternoon, all the engaged man talked about was how his fiance was extremely promiscuous while intoxicated, all the engaged woman did was try to get free drinks from other men while dancing with them and touching them, and all the other man did was talk about trying to find some coke (Not the soda) and talk about having sex with all the women in the bars that he saw that were barely half his age.

How did I feel at the end of the afternoon? Disappointed. These people who should have been responsible adults were stuck in their irresponsible teenage years, doing their hedonistic activities, and not caring what people thought of them, or the repercussions of their actions on their relationships, or how they would feel when they woke up the next morning. I hope I don't end up like that--there's got to be more than that.