J.J. Jenkins is a journalism freshman and Mustang Daily freshman columnist.
The master of the English language, William Shakespeare, once said, “Today it is Friday: Tomorrow it is Saturday and Sunday comes afterwards.” Wait, maybe that was Rebecca Black — I get them confused.
After getting my bowl of cereal on Saturday morning and following a Rebecca Black-like Friday night, I decided there was no better use of my freshman column than to pay tribute to that glorious day of the week.
When I write that I had a Rebecca Black-like Friday night, I mean I sat at home pretending to have fun while my friends scurried away to an undisclosed location off-campus.
To be fair, it wasn’t my fault. The Mustang Daily, to preserve my innocence, assigned me to cover the Friday night baseball game … fun, fun, fun, fun (that’s the correct amount of ‘fun’ right?), and I was left writing my story until midnight.
However, the great part about receiving incoherent texts, like the ones Black must send when she is sober, is trying to reconstruct the story the next day.
I met up with the gang on Saturday to drive to Firestone Grill (I chose the front seat, just saying) and began the process of unraveling the night, which consisted of two different groups of friends meeting for the first time and a brief update on who may (or may not) have hooked up with each other.
This is the first critical element to having a fun Friday that does not come back to haunt you. Cracking jokes about friends over dinner the next night is funny, but if one of them unknowingly hits too close to home, you might find yourself with no choice but to take the back seat when you go out again.
I was also entertained with awesome quotes like, “Wait, why did you guys leave me alone by a cliff?” Each statement seemed to bring back flickers of light in the eyes of my friends who would suddenly remember more events from the haziness that was Friday.
“So, who’s Patrick?” the same girl asked looking at her phone.
“The guy we left you alone with by the cliff,” the group responded.
“Ohhh, was he attractive? Cause he just texted me.”
The silence of the group had the uncanny ability to turn a perfectly pale face a deep shade of red until she managed to shrug off the funny looks and slide her phone back into her pocket.
I don’t think she “got down” on Friday, but she might be hoping this weekend will end sometime soon.
But I digress, kind of like how that rapper interrupts Black for a few blissful moments in her YouTube viral hit. The next most entertaining part of hearing second-hand about a Friday night party is learning how your best guy friends acted.
For some reason, my toughest (and supposedly most manly) friends turn into cuddly teddy bears on Friday … I have no idea what is in the water on Friday that would make them act in such a way, but maybe water wasn’t involved.
But back to Rebecca and I hanging out to start the weekend. While I started to doze off to sleep in an attempt to make up for lost sleep in the first week of school — it was tough, I know — my phone started to buzz.
Needless to say all the ladies were telling me to come to the party, maybe it was something like “we so excited” to see you come, or at least that is what I could understand from the messages.
In my stupor, I resisted, saying that next Friday I’d be up for a fun time to see what all the buzz was about.
They say college is about having a good time, and maybe learning a little bit, but I found that this weekend showed college can become all about hearing about other people’s good time, unless you make a conscious decision to be included.
So it is time to stop living vicariously through Facebook (and Black) in favor of getting out to see the world. In the words of a famous poet, “Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend. Partying, partying yeah!”