Happy New Year, and Beware of Drunk Texting!!

While every other blogger is sharing the obligatory resolutions post with you, this New Years I decided to write something a little different.  I want to give you a New Year tale of what NOT to do.  You see, the beauty of being anonymous is that I can share embarrassing moments with you and still preserve my cool-status amongst those I know.  (Who am I kidding? I don't have a "cool status" to protect.  All my friends already know this story.)

I just spent the last 10 minutes deleting the couple of numbers in my phone that could be dangerous on a night like tonight.  Let's just say the ghost of New Years past visited me earlier today and reminded me of what happened last year...

It was late summer of 2010, I met a guy at a big industry event.  He worked on the production side and looked just like Steve McQueen.  Over the course of the next couple of months, we went out on a number of great dates.  You know, the usual: dinners, movies, paint-balling, plans to bungee jump.  It was all there... the mutual interest, similar senses of adventure, great conversation... and the chemistry.  There was definitely chemistry.  On one of these dates, we went out and it happened to be Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.  Though everyone around us stared as if we were crazy, we walked around shouting "Happy New Year" and celebrated as if it were December 31st.  Complete with a big ol' kiss at midnight.  It was great.

Then, it just ended.  Very abruptly, in fact.  At the beginning of October, and when I was just about to drag him back to my apartment for the first time... he never called me back.  At the end of a text exchange, he said he'd call me the next day, but then never did.  Absolute radio silence.  And I never called him to find out why.

Okay.  I'm not so arrogant to think that I'm everyone's dream girl, I'm not delusional.  But I usually get my calls returned, especially after a guy has invested two months.  So yeah, I was a bit confused.  And I'll admit it, disappointed.  I was pretty into him.  But fortunately, I don't dwell on things too much, so I just moved on, half-expecting to hear from him at some point.  But when the real New Years came around and I still hadn't, my curiosity got the better of me and I emailed him.

"While making my New Years plans, I realized it it's the second time I've celebrated this year, and I thought of you.  Where did you go?"  He responded with an apology and saying he felt like such a jerk, but long story short, his ex came back in the picture.

Alright, that's a bummer (if it's even true).  But I'll take it, even if it's a white lie.  So I answered back with a very cool and collected, "Not to worry.  I'll always remember you covered in paint."  I thought to myself, there.  Good job.  Now my curiosity is satisfied, and should we ever bump into each other again and circumstances are different, he won't be worried that I've harbored any resentment.  I'm the cool girl who could be chill when she got passed over.  (And hey, if I'm lucky, maybe he'll even wonder why I wasn't all torn up about it.  That can't hurt my cause.)  Brilliant, I thought.  You never know what will happen down the road.

Well, excellent exits are only as good as your will power to leave them alone.  Flash forward to New Years Eve later that week, I had way too much champagne.  I was having a riot of a time.  Mr. McQueen was on my mind, and in my drunken stupor, I decided to text flirt with him.  I woke up the next day to the horror of reading the following sequence of text messages in my phone.  All from me.  All about ten minutes to midnight.

"Haapfhy Nw

Haf;

Shit, Im drink.

Happy roshashahsna

Hopea ur girlfend is goods ta yoou n u getsa ggod kiss tinight!

Happy HPyyp New Year."

He didn't respond.  Oh. My. God.  The shame!!!  In my drunken stupor, I thought I was being cute and flirtatious.  Let this be a lesson to all of you to not trust your own judgement when you're drunk.  You're probably wrong.

What I had hoped would be cute and flirty ended up reading very angry and bitter (not to mention horribly drunk and misspelled).  In a ten-minute stretch, I had no doubt ruined my non-crazy girl label.  If I tried to explain that I was trying to be funny, or that I really hadn't been obsessing over him these last few months, that he was just on  my mind because of the emails, I would have just buried myself deeper in the crazy-girl pit.  I realized there was little to do to clean up the damage from these texts.  In fact, probably nothing I could do.  I sent one more text message that morning:

"Sorry about that.  This year's resolution: try not to be an idiot."

So today, I had to eliminate the temptation.  I deleted a couple numbers from my phone that have the potential to be dangerous.  I wrote them down on a piece of paper I'll leave at home so I can reenter them tomorrow, once the hangover subsides.  You would be wise to do the same if there is a number or two  in your book belonging to someone whom you would rather they not know you think of them at midnight on New Years Eve.

Happy New Years Eve, everyone!!  And for god's sake, be safe... Please don't drink and text!!!