Cell Phones: Sobriety Required*

Cell Phones have been a great advance in technology, and subsequently, has affected the way each and every one of us lives. As good as this invention is, much embarrassment follows if you get a DUI - Dialing Under the Influence.

-As I mentioned, one thing that’s almost always a bad idea is drunk dials; however, they do usually provide a great story the next day, provided either: one of the people taking part in the dial is sober, there’s someone in the room at the time who is sober to recount the situation later, or it’s recorded via voicemail. For instance, after one particular night, I was in the same room as my brother Kevin who wanted to call his friend Dan. He calls someone who says they’re not Dan, and I hear my brother repeatedly say “who is this?” about 30 times until the person on the other end of the line goes, “This isn’t Dan, it’s Dad, D-A-D.” Then about a minute later, my dad walks downstairs, laughs at my brother, asks if he needed a bucket in which to puke, then waited till next morning to relay the story.

-One of my first weekends at MC included a crazy night. I was at this one bar having a great time, but there's one thing you need to know about me while intoxicated: I am both very open to persuasion and get confused very easily. Before I know it, I find myself in the front seat of a cab going to another bar about 20 blocks down from where I was (which was about 10 blocks from my school). Anyway, I get to this other place, and I don't know anyone plus all the girls are basically preoccupied. I decide this place isn't for me, so I walk outside and call my buddy Deeds. My friend Steph answers the phone and is in desperation that I need to come back to the first place cause Deeds is in trouble. All I know is that both these places lie on Broadway, so all I have to do is walk north. Paint the picture: a confused me walking all alone in the Bronx to go find my unconsciously drunk friend. I decide to call my friend from back home, Garrett, and I don't remember the conversation, but here is what he relayed to me a few days later. Basically I had mentioned to him that I had this theory that I was a lot less likely to be confronted/get shot/get stabbed if I looked busy. He said I was like, "people see me, and they're like oh I want to hurt this kid, but then they see me on the phone, and since he's busy on the phone, it's not worth it." So I talked to him for the better part of 20 blocks in the BX until I got back to my friend. Supposedly I talked about a lot other crazy shit that's for another time, but in the end my buddy Deeds got back all right after one of the most adventurous 10 block walks back to school I've ever had. Hey, at least my theory on people ignoring me while I was on the phone rang true, 'cause I made it back home in one piece.

-My friend Jill visited our friend Erin at URI one weekend. I vividly remember a drunk dial I had received the night she was there. You know if it's a random night and you somehow know a friend has been drinking, you get a phone call from that person at like 1 or 2 AM and you're like, "Yes, hilarity ensues." Well, here we go. Not confirmed by her, apparently Jill is a very confused drunk because she calls me and immediately mentions all the people she knew when she went to some party and how she has no clue where any of them were. She's walking around this house that she was in, describing literally everything. "I'm sitting indian style in a room, it has red paint, there's a wooden dresser in the corner, there's a blond guy making out with some girl, what the hell?" Somehow I lose connection with her, and I'm left with the idea that she is completely lost in this house that is pretty far away from URI, and she has no clue where anyone that she knows is. About a half hour later, I get a call from Jill, who is now with Erin...obviously she was under the decked porch. That is also another thing that drunk people do, they assume that you know the most random things, like "dude we went out, YOU DIDN'T KNOW WHERE I WAS?!? Like the whole time I was in they alley shotgunning beers with the homeless guys, how did you not see us?" Obviously...

-As I said, both people cannot be drunk in order for a DUI to be recorded. A classic example is of when both me and my friend Brian called each other. Not only did we speak, but we each left a voicemail that we each listened to that night, and we both deleted the messages. Needless to say, nothing other than that was remembered, who knows what the fuck either of us said.

-The morning after a successful DUI, I'm notified by the friend who I called, and they inevitably mention that I'm a very distracted person on the phone. I think the thing is, a lot of the time I forget that I'm on the phone, so when someone in the room asks me a question, I start a conversation, but then I realize there's a phone on my face, so I continue the phone call I was having. I'm always told it's an entertaining event because I say some pretty fucked up shit, especially when taken out of context in the fact that the person on the phone can only hear me talking about that fat chick my friend took back home with last night. Live to serve baby.

-Finally, drunk texting is something that is both noticeable and very memorable. Clearly someone is drunk texting when a sentence looks like either this, "oyoo whtta yupoou to tnhgti??" or this, "these are roof got chicks her tonighhgiht." In the first case, it's someone with a QWERTY keyboard, and the second case is the fucked up user of T9 texting. Either situation involves hilarity; I love reading my texts from the night before because I come up with stupid shit like, "YOOO saturated saturdays are the best!" Not only did I come up with saturated saturdays (a play off thirsty Thursdays), but I spelled the entire thing correctly with subject verb agreement.