The importance of digestion.

Rushing the stage in a pink spandex body suit in 7th grade for a dance recital was embarrassing. Having my dad ask the orthodontist if my Herbst appliance was pronounced Herpes was embarrassing. Having too much wine and audibly farting on a stranger was embarrassing, (and classy.) Oddly, none of these things embarrassed me as much as they should have. 
I've always felt that my immediate family fit the term, "Black Sheep." We're weird. We don't go to church. I don't own a polo from American Eagle. Everything is a dramatic event worthy of tears and screaming followed by, "I didn't mean it's" and "let's start over's."
Needless to say, it's kind of hard to embarrass a girl who's father used to practice his nun-chuck skills in the front yard every Sunday wearing nothing but neon yellow daisy dukes. However, something happened last weekend that was so utterly shocking and disturbing, that I could only really make out one very foreign emotion. That feeling brewing and stewing and boiling like hot shit soup inside of me was none other than: embarrassment.  

Like any other 19 year-old girl or boy, I believe the drinking age should be lowered so that it'll be easier for me to get into bars and buy alcohol, plus, alcohol really brings out the best in me.... Sometimes I talk with other 19 year-olds about how stupid the current drinking age is and how we should all be allowed to drink. I was probably on one of these douchey rants when I went to visit my older sister in Brooklyn last weekend with my friend Jenn. My sister, her friends, Jenn and myself went out for a late dinner around 11 or 12. I demolished what looked like an entire cow packed into one dense piece of burger meat smothered with bleu cheese, mayonnaise, ketchup and french fries that I'd stuffed in there for safekeeping. Growing up with that whole, "There are starving kids in Africa" mentality, I finished every last bite. 
After giving myself about six minutes to digest, we all walked over to a bar. I think all underaged kids trying to get into a bar worry about that terrible possibility of getting turned away. You can try to appear confident in your slutty bandage dress and forever 21 heels and pale pink hooker lipstick and the "my friend blew the bouncer, were getting in for sure" speech, but there's no fooling anyone, you're just as scared as the rest of us average-looking non-whores. 

I was staring at my thick plastic Maryland I.D trying to remember my new birthday when I became aware that there was no bouncer and I could just walk right in. Me and Jenn walked into the bar looking like two young girls who got lost on their way to a candy store or a late-night high school class. My sister asked me what I wanted a shot of. Trying (and failing) to sound casual, I told her to surprise me. She brought me and her friends each a shot of Jameson. It was safe to say I was scared immediately. I can barely stomach cherry flavored cough syrup. And for the first time, there was no chaser. No stupid girl telling me what chaser works best and why and how she found out. No cranberry vodka or rum and coke. No cliche college asshole drink that I was so used to. 

The shot of Jameson in my hand looked like a double shot, or a triple, or a quadruple. In reality it was probably just a single. And in one casual motion, everyone around me raised their glasses and threw the shot back like it was a glass of Hawaiian punch. 
4 seconds after I took the shot, I realized I was doing the exact same motions/sounds that my dog does in the moments before he's about to puke. However, the one thing my dog didn't have was hands, and I intended to use mine. Quickly, I threw my hands over my mouth to form a puke seal and turned to look for an escape plan. But as most plans seem to do, they fell through. I was face to face with a group of 6 or more of my sisters friends. They stared at my panicked face in confusion and in one quick lurch, I projectile vomited all over them, the floor and myself. My puke seal backfired on me. The gaps left between my fingers forced the puke to shoot out even more violently. It looked how a hose would look if you strapped a bunch of rubber bands over its opening and then turned it on full pressure. 
Confused, drunk and possibly tripping on mushrooms, they stood there for a second half-smiling, half-computing and half-disbelieving the previous event that now left them covered in a strangers vomit. With puke covered hands, I tapped my sister on the shoulder and casually told her that I puked on the floor. Before she could register what I had just told her, I ran to the bathroom to clean up and then outside to a corner store with Jenn. Neither of us really smoke, so I guess it's a mystery as to why we both chipped in to buy a pack of Winston Reds for $12.50. Like two wannabe cowboys, we stood on some street corner in Brooklyn smoking Winston Reds and laughing about the first time that I was ever really embarrassed.