Half My Age

or Why I Am Glad I Am Not 22 Right Now

I am glad because my weekends back then looked something like this:

7:30 am - Wake up. Groan. Try to sit up. Oh yeah. Kahlua and Milk does not belong in a one quart souvenir Coke glass.

8:15 am - Stagger to the bathroom.

8:20 am - Try to brush sour milk taste out of mouth.

8:21 am - Drop toothbrush into the sink, where it picks up speed and ski-jumps out of the sink and into the toilet.

8:22 to 8:33 am - Stand there for an embarrassing length of time, trying to decide if flushing the toothbrush is really that bad an idea. The plumbing bends and the toothbrush doesn't. But. It's the toilet.

8:34 am - Fish it out, and...

8:35 am to 9:05 am - Spend 1/2 an hour disinfecting my arm. No, I do not use the toothbrush. Am proud of myself for not considering it. Which means I must have considered that it could have been considered. Rats!

9:10 am - While showering, decide that not flushing the toothbrush means I really hadn't been that drunk, and point this out to at least 6 people before the day is over.

10:00 am - give up on the idea of making it to the early Jazzercise(tm) class.

11:00 am - give up on the idea of making it to the late Jazzercise(tm) class.

12:00 noon - give up on the idea of making it anywhere that involves class.

The rest of the day goes on about like this. And then on Sunday morning, I do it all again, except instead of dropping my toothbrush into the toilet, I manage to lose a contact lens in there. Back then, you didn't get 3 months' worth and then throw them out as you used them. So a contact lens in the toilet meant I couldn't leave the house all day, because someone would have seen me in my goggle-eyed Jane Fonda in 9 To 5 glasses, and no way is that happening.

The good news is, the only pictures of the evenings that led up to these mornings are in a shoe box in my closet.

Not so for the 22 year olds of today, my friends. Not in the land of Tivo and Infomercials. Today's 22 year old? You start out crawling along a steel I-beam 50 feet off the ground while chewing cockroaches for "Fear Factor", ratchet up the evening by clawing a few eyes out on "elimiDATE", and round out the festivities with a special guest appearance french kissing your best friend while flashing your breasts for "Girls Gone Wild: Anaheim Edition". All this before you stagger back to your "Real World: Oxnard" house, sobbing and carrying your left shoe because you broke the heel when you were jello wrestling topless / doing body shots off of some girl named Amber / cat fighting the other woman on "Cheaters". And just before you turn in for the night, you remember to treat the camera crew to the perfect angle for a close up of your underwear while you instant replay your two-drink minimum into the hot tub.

See, I just know there's no way I could have made it through an evening out in today's Reality Show life if I'd kept blowing off the gym like that.

Oh. And with all those cockroach legs stuck in my teeth, I definitely would have used the toothbrush anyway.