Rule #4: Be a Good Friend

OK, so this rule isn’t really for the birthday girl or boy. Instead, it’s a good warning for the friends they so happily decide to invite and celebrate the big day with.

And, unfortunately, it’s something that I had to learn the hard way.

You have to be a good friend to your friend on their 21st birthday.

September 26, 2009. My best friend Vicky’s 21st birthday party.

Technically, her birthday is on the 27th. Since this year that landed on a Sunday, though, Vicky’s Mom decided to put together this huge 21st birthday blowout at their house on the South Side of Chicago. It was close friends and family only, and since Vicky’s Mexican, her whole family can handle their liquor pretty well. Patron, Jose Cuervo, Andre, Grey Goose -  you name it, they bought it.

Vicky was the first one of my friends to turn 21, so this was a big deal. We had been talking about it all summer and looking toward all the drunken memories that we would finally get to experience (legally, that is.)

Well, I ask off for the night from work about a month before the big day arrives. I check my schedule the week before the big day, and….Margaret Smith, Saturday, Sept. 26, 4-10:30.

I call my friend Ariel, who was one of the other 4 invitees. Ariel DelaRosa, Saturday, Sept. 26, 1-Cl.

Elsa, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2-Cl.

Jennie, Saturday, Sept. 26, 4-Cl.

We all asked for the night off, and none of us got it. Well two, actually. One girl, who’s not listed above, went. Another got the night off, but she decided to work anyways because she needed money (I’ll let you guess who it was but I swear to god it wasn’t me!)

How is it that none of us got the night off? An odd coProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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cidence? Just bad luck? Or should we all have requested monthsProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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n advance? Maybe we should have just not showed up to work at all, or even called in sick?

It’s too late to go back and point fingers, now. It’s something I will never forgive myself for, though, and I’m not sure Vicky fully has either. Oh, she still got drunk – but she kind of needed to in order to get over the fact that more than half of us didn’t come.

So be a good friend on your friends 21st birthday. Make it the best, unforgettable, drunkenly forgettable day they ever had.

Because I sure didn’t.