Last night after studying diligently for my Italian exam until 2:30 a.m. I settled in for a nice deep sleep before I had to get up again in five hours and bomb the previously mentioned exam. Imagine my dismay at being awakened shortly after by my incessantly ringing phone. It became very clear in about 30 seconds what had happened: I was the victim of a drunk dial, a phenomena that has taken over campuses across the country. While I know that people feel the need to scroll through their contacts and call people they know (or don’t know) while intoxicated, I think we could all save ourselves some dignity if we learn a few of the rules. My own experiences with drunk dialing is an embarrassing litany of conversations that I can’t quite recall – and I’m not complaining about that.
The new trends for drunken communication include drunken facebooking and drunken Myspacing, neither of which is a very good idea. Drunk dialing, however, is still the preferred method of communication among drunken college students. While some could question your actual level of intoxication if you have the ability to log onto facebook and type a somewhat coherent message, drunk dialing leaves you free reign to be completely unintelligible, leaving no questions. As with anything, rules and regulations must be firmly set in place when drunk dialing so that the morning after doesn’t turn the previous evening into a night of regret and loss. One must carefully choose their recipient instead of calling every possible contact in the phonebook until your phone dies to avoid the morning awkwardness. Rule No. 1: Every friend can be dialed unless you have nothing nice (or funny) to say. Anyone in your phone list who you keep regular contact with can be hit with a drunken phone call. Never, and I mean never, call anyone who you’ve only talked to once two years ago because you needed to know the sociology homework for that week – unless you want to be perceived as a weird loser with no friends.
Rule No. 2: If your cell phone dies, remember everything happens for a reason. It is not acceptable to borrow you friend’s phone to do your dialing. This is a given, you just can’t use up your friends minutes to do your dirty work – you wouldn’t want it done to you, don’t do it to anyone else.
Rule No. 3: The “do not call” or “never call” list includes family and professors. Either of these two forbidden categories will result in ‘serious’ conversations the next day. If you absolutely must dial a family member say something nice, such as, hi mom I know it’s late but I just wanted to say I love you.
Rule No. 4: Don’t state the obvious. Usually freshmen are prone to this mistake. Obviously, you are intoxicated, you don’t need to repeat that assumption to the person you are talking to – ever. Feel free to hang up anytime even if it’s in the middle of the sentence because, after all, it’s not rude if you are drunk. By showing a little more discretion while drunk dialing we can all avoid the awkward conversations that ensue, and continue our lives in blissful ignorance of whom we might have talked to, and what it was about. We are not drunk dialing to have meaningful conversations that will make us into better people, we are doing it for the satisfaction of having a free pass to speak our mind, so having to talk about it sober just takes all the fun away. If you forget the rules and you’re drunken dialing session goes south, claim memory loss. This never fails, because once you claim memory loss, the conversation cannot continue. After all, if you can’t remember it then it never happened, right?
E-mail Amy at viewpoint@technicianonline.com