The Things We Do

I went out for St. Patrick’s day last night because I didn’t have a good enough excuse not to. If I had just followed my instinct I would have bought a bottle of Jameson and watched Mad Men. So I got to the bar and immediately a bulgy, toothless woman in her forties walks up to me. Wearing a green sports bra and green booty shorts, she opens her mouth and asks for some beer money. I gag as the smell of sour milk and cheap alcohol seems to stick in my throat. Tossing her a dollar, I run to the other end of the bar which of course only makes her follow me. I squeeze up next to another guy who thankfully distracts her long enough for me to get a pitcher and bolt.

As I sat drinking my beer, I could see this woman dancing, yelling, bargaining for drinks, and all around being belligerent. It struck me that if she had been my own age, nothing she was doing would have offended me, except for the bad breath, but that’s just always offensive. I even looked around the place and could see a few hipster kids behaving almost exactly like her but none of us at my table even mentioned them. We were more concerned with how sad and pathetic this lady was. But why?

Why is it sad and pathetic for one person to act like an drunken idiot, but not for another? Should age, wealth, or possessions like a bed or new clothes really be the difference between what we deem acceptable behavior? We don’t do this with most things. No one says that a young person volunteering at a food shelter is better than an older. Or that a young, wealthy college kid who commits murder is less offensive than the same crime done by a homeless fifty year old. I know that getting drunk on St. Patty’s day is neither a crime nor charity, it just seems to me that we place far less emphasis on the actions of a person and far too much on factors that should be irrelevant. If it’s pathetic for a homeless man to get blackout drunk during the middle of the week, why is it that someone my age can do it and most people just shrug it off, or even encourage it as blowing off steam?

Now I’m not trying to put down alcohol, I like to drink and dance and have a great time. I’m just struggling with the fact that the things I do are not concrete. If I look back at a drunken St. Patrick’s day, will it be a good memory five years from now? Will it be embarrassing? Or will it someday be a regret? Will the good things I do deteriorate the same way? Will handing a beggar a few dollars be a good thing? How about if I see a story in the news where a drunk hobo fell asleep on some railroad tracks? Will my good deed be as clean then?

I know that I’m over thinking this but I feel like this is something that’s ignored. We go through lives copying the actions of our peers around us, assuming they are right. It’s only if we see someone acting outside of their age group that we instantly know they are doing something reprehensible. Good deeds should not be limited by our age or circumstances and I think the same is true of bad ones as well. I honestly don’t know what the overall point of this whole rant is. You would think that after all this I would have a conclusion. It just seems to me that we need to really think about what we do with our lives instead of just moving with the pack.