In our society, I feel that people (including myself) think of a twenty first birthday as a big deal. When a person turns thirteen they become a teenager, when a person turns eighteen they can buy lotto tickets and cigarettes, when a person turns twenty they are no longer a teenager, and when a person turns twenty one they can legally drink. There will always be a debate on what the drinking age should be. Some people say that if a person can go to war and die for their country, they should be able to have a drink. These people want the drinking age to be lowered to eighteen. Other people say that if we lower the drinking age it will cause more accidents. This meaning that kids who are eighteen are not responsible enough to be drinking and making good decisions. In my personal opinion, when I was eighteen of course I wanted the drinking age to be lowered, but now that I am almost twenty one I believe that it should stay twenty one. I consider myself to be a responsible person and I think I could have handled myself if the legal drinking age was lowered, but some of my friends would not have been able to handle it.
When I hear stories about people's twenty first birthdays it almost makes me nervous. The majority of people say, "I don't even remember my twenty first birthday." The reason behind this is they drank so much that they blacked out and the last thing they remember is taking their first legal shot. Our society makes this okay. In our society, I feel that when someone turns twenty one it is okay if they go out, get completely hammered, and then spend the rest of the night throwing up. The next morning, everyone is so excited to fill them in on what they did the night before, while that person is sitting their with the biggest headache of their life. A twenty first birthday is like a right of passage in our society. You are suppose to go out and get drunk, but is that the best way to start out the path to real adulthood?
I am turning twenty one on Saturday February eleventh. That is about two weeks from today. Everyone wants to know what I am going to do on my twenty first birthday. The problem is, I have no idea! I want to do something amazing that I will remember for the rest of my life. I just don't know what that something amazing really is. I have thought about going to NYC or Boston to go bar hopping. Then I think to myself, well if it snows I will have to cancel and then have no plans. Another idea was to go out to dinner with my friends underage and then go to a bar in New Haven with all of my friends of age. Then I think to myself, well do I really want to spend my twenty first birthday at a bar in New Haven, that is not amazing. There are so many things that could go wrong that I almost don't even want to plan anything. This way when the day arrives, I just go with the flow and then I can't be disappointed right? The answer to that question is no because I can definitely be disappointed if I don't think of something that I will remember for the rest of my life.
In order to keep myself from going crazy, I just think, well as long as I am with good friends I will have a good time doing anything. I am just hoping that somehow I will have a great twenty first birthday. I am just hoping that somehow it will be something amazing that I can remember forever. The sad part about birthdays though is they are one day out of the entire year. So I am getting all worked up over one day that will come and go so fast that soon enough it will be February twelfth. So why does society make turning twenty one into such a big deal?
No comments:
Post a Comment