If you were to ask me to describe in words the emotions I felt on the days I took my final exam in school, I would just look at you with a dazed expression on my face.
I wouldn’t know what to say, except, you don’t get to feel that way twice in this lifetime.
I remember going into class with my spiral-bound presentation. Time for the presentation rolled around, and we all proceeded to the front of the class individually to defend our BSc. projects. I was scared and proud at the same time.
When it was my turn, I got up there, said my piece with a concoction of feelings running through me, and left the stage. Not long after, we wrapped it up. We immediately stepped out to celebrate with the rest of my class.
We sang, marched through the roads of campus, and signed each other’s T-shirts. The celebration wasn’t as vibrant as the previous years due to an incident that happened. What would have taken 3 hours to celebrate only took 1. It was quite underwhelming, but I digress.
On my way back to my room, I saw a friend of mine who was walking with some classmates. I spontaneously joined them since I wasn’t ready to end the day just yet. Surprisingly, they were headed to one of the bars on campus.
We got there, sat around a table, and ordered some drinks. I honestly planned to go with malt, but my friend peeped it and refused.
“Everyone on this table will leave here drunk or tipsy today,” he proclaimed. 😅
I mean, it’s not like I was opposed to it, so I changed my order to a chilled bottle of Desperado. I had no prior experience with this brand of beer; heck, I didn’t even know what category of alcohol it fell under. All I know is I loved the packaging and the weed symbol on it. I took it as a promise that I, in fact, was going to get high. 😅
Our orders came, and we drank away. I remember pouring my beer into a glass cup like any other liquid, and sure enough, it got angry and fizzled out of the cup. That was when my friend graciously taught me the proper way to serve a cup of beer.
It was an amazing experience; we talked, in between sips, about the past six years of schooling that we had all survived. About the hell some lecturers put us through, and generally we just got to know each other better.
As the evening went on, the alcohol loosened us up, and the conversation really started flowing. I got to learn that a classmate at the table was a marijuana connoisseur and that another classmate almost dropped out the previous year because she rejected a lecturer’s sexual advances.
Where sober me would have judged the girl or critiqued the story even more, high me found empathy. I also shared a few of my secrets with them in a bid to connect deeper, and that we did. That meeting changed something in me.
We all approached the table as complete strangers, but we left the table as friends and humans. That interaction was special because we all let our guards down and connected with one another on a vulnerable level, without the fear or presence of judgment. It healed something within me.
I occasionally think back fondly to that round table discussion and wish we as a society were raw and open with one another, without judgment. How beautiful the world would be.
This is #BeerSaturday week and I would like to invite @vickiee
to write a post in any language about beer with at least 3 pictures.