A friend of mine who never met his biological father used to tell me the only time he thought about his dad was when he was driving along the interstate, and he'd sometimes catch himself wondering whether he'd passed his father going in the other direction. I think about that a lot — about how many people we come in contact with without ever really connecting. While they're mostly just late-night, anxiety-prodded thoughts, something happened a few years ago that made me realize how important some of those seemingly random interactions may be.
When I was a freshman in college I visited some friends from high school and we went to a keg party in Murfreesboro. I had been living in New York City for a few months, and was really excited by what I considered to be the novelty of an actual college keg party near a suburban college campus. I was also really proud of my drinking skills, so I couldn't wait to show off what I was sure would be a masterful keg-stand, an elegant display of beer-drinking prowess that involves doing a handstand on a keg while someone holds the nozzle to your mouth.
There I was, mid-stand, and my T-shirt started falling down around my neck, a predictable result of gravity that I was not prepared for. Another party-goer, a kindly Southern gentleman, pulled my shirt back up to my waist, a gesture fueled by a politeness that I was already unused to in my experience of sleazy Manhattan bar culture. I never forgot it.
For years I would tell that story to my jaded girlfriends in New York, and they would shake their heads in disbelief at the kindness of Southern men.
Fast-forward to today. I've been married for a little more than a year now, and I always considered the story of meeting my husband six years ago to be pretty storybook — we met on the first day that I moved to Nashville, and even though we only said maybe seven words to each other at that first meeting, there was an immediate connection. My stepfather, who was with me, even noticed it — on his drive back to my hometown in East Tennessee he told my mom I was "a goner."
But when my husband and I started getting serious, we did that new-couple ritual of going through old photographs together. One photo was of me with those high school friends at the MTSU party I'd gone to more than 10 years earlier — we were smiling and sitting on a couch with the kitchen in the background. "I know that house," he said. Then I told him the story of my legendary keg-standing and the person who held my shirt up.
He remembered that party — and he also remembered holding my shirt up.
I asked the other friends in that photograph and they concurred — my husband went to a lot of the same parties and was undoubtedly at that one. I often think about how lucky I am to have made the connection with the guy who held my shirt up so much later in life, after years of dating people who were constantly letting me down.
Am I happy that a kegger has played so prominently in my life story? Will we one day tell our grandchildren about all the good that can come from underage drinking in loose-fitting tops? Absolutely.
