A First Time for Everything

I was never the partying type¹. In college, I was one of those students that almost prided himself on not doing what everybody else was doing. Ever since then, I was "lucky" to be a person that didn't carry an possibly embarrassing inebriation-related story. Between Jen and I, she was the only one who carried such a story where one's memory blanked out in the process.

That is, until New Moon's opening night.

We arrived at the Sherman Oaks Arclight in good spirits and took in the sights, the large wall full of posters, the assigned seating and the bar. I don't usually get mixed drinks, but I decided to get a screwdriver to compliment Jen's cosmopolitan. I've gotten these in the past, with no problems other than the "extremely happy Bryan" effect. To that point, although I drank it faster than usual, I didn't have any problems.

So everything continued normally, we got our food, saw our seats, contemplated stealing another set of seats if the people never showed up (which they did) and started watching the movie.

About an hour into the movie, what seemed like a splitting headache hit me followed by something I mistook as queasiness. I couldn't focus on the movie and the last thought I had was that I should get to a bathroom in case the worst were to happen.

I never made it. After tapping Jen on the shoulder and informing her of my intent to go to the little boy's room, I got up and started down the stairs and across the middle of the walkway. I remember grabbing a few chairs.

Then, for the first time, I blanked out and apparently fell on my face. Of all places for this to happen, it had to happen in a movie theatre.

I remember a light in my face, a man's voice and Jen's voice saying that I had a drink to said man. The next thing I remembered was Jen saying "come on babe, we're almost there." Apparently in that span of time, I had fallen down twice and was completely passed out. According to Jen, the usual taps on the face produced no results. When we got to the stall, she wiped off some blood and then ran off to get some water.

I sat there wondering what the hell just happened.

In true Filipino fashion, I worried about the spectacle I just made and how embarrassed I was. I wondered how strong the bartender made my screwdriver and I felt bad about making Jen miss part of the movie. After about 7 minutes, I got up and about 3 minutes after that, I felt completely normal with the help of the last remaining hot dog at the theater.

I started to yuk the whole situation up quite quickly and we made it back to the movie. We had only missed about 20 minutes. The blood? Well, on my first fall I got some rug-burn on parts of my face and, somehow, the interior of my upper lip. Those two bruises are now reminders of how a little vodka managed to completely shut me down where it never did in the past.

"We'll look back at it and laugh," Jen said as we walked out of the theater. I'm laughing at it now and sticking to beer.

There's a first time for everything, this was apparently the first time I fell forward without stopping my fall. Well, hey, I could never do it in the past even if I wanted to.