By Jennifer Silverman
The Curious Columnist
When it comes to rites of passage, college is often a crash course. Most co-eds quickly discover how to party like a pro, the subsequent agony of an 8:00 AM class, and the collateral horsepower of caffeine.
College is rife with frat fêtes, dorm bashes, and college town pub crawls…unless of course, you attended fashion school in Manhattan like Moi – no Greek life, no campus, no tailgating.
Instead, you perfect your taxi hail, learn to sniff out a sample sale, and arrive late for lectures because you happened upon a Sex and the City shoot. (Naturally, priorities shifted.)
Due to my atypical undergrad experience, I never quite developed a palate (or a tolerance) for alcohol. Despite sojourns to Napa Valley and the vineyards of Italy, I remain a 40-year-old lightweight.
During nightly “wine time” with my Island neighbors, I too would like to wind down with a glass of wine. Alas, most alcohol is wasted on me; my taste is akin to that of a high-schooler swilling Malibu Bay Breeze.
Nonetheless, for the past few years, I have been sampling a variety of alcoholic beverages in the hopes something might stick. My latest acquisition was a blueberry-apple hard cider. After sipping a portion, I opted to return to the same bottle the following night. (The fact that hard cider is carbonated escaped me – one swig of completely flat, leftover cider was decidedly unpleasant.)
Taking pity on me, one of my neighbors kindly offered to concoct a custom margarita – designed for a novice who prefers her adult beverages to taste like juice. After a few hearty sips, my every utterance suddenly struck me as downright hilarious, and a grand time was had by all. I finished my margarita, and my neighbors saw me home.
A few minutes later, the euphoria had faded, replaced with overwhelming queasiness. After five episodes of The Golden Girls, I finally drifted off to sleep.
An hour or so later, still in my margarita-induced stupor, I was awakened by a strange siren. Fumbling around for my phone, I realized my home security alarm was blaring.
Before it occurred to me to panic, I was initially amused that my alarm system would wail on the one night I was arguably tipsy. Then it dawned on me, if my burglar alarm was going off, there must be a burglar. My slowly moving mind promptly assembled a montage of masked horror movie bad guys wielding machetes.
The only action that made sense in the moment was to silence the deafening clamor. Phone in hand, I turned off the alarm remotely, overconfident that I could summon the police with the tap of a button in my security app.
Frozen at my bedroom door, silently cursing that one margarita, I glanced down at my canine companion, Petunia. A prissy Westie who fancies herself a vicious Doberman, she timidly peered out from behind me. Her usual “let me at ’em!” attitude had morphed into an uncharacteristically polite, “After you.”
Still not clear-headed, I unwisely ventured downstairs, convinced I’d find a machete where no machete had any business being. Strangely, everything was exactly as I left it – nothing was disturbed.
Perplexed, I headed to the back door to investigate and noticed something on the floor. It was the alarm sensor. Apparently, after I replaced the battery a few days earlier, the sensor was no longer properly secured. It had fallen off the wall and tripped the alarm. No machete man.
As Petunia and I heaved a collective sigh of relief, I poured myself a gingerale and turned on another episode of The Golden Girls to lull us back to sleep.
Surely, “non-margarita me” would have handled the situation with far more caution. Fortunately, the only slasher lurking was the one in my head. (No more margaritas for yours truly.)
Jennifer Silverman is a lifestyle writer and celebrity wardrobe stylist who has dressed hundreds of television personalities and professional athletes. Some of her favorite styling projects include The Olympic Games, The World Cup, and The Oscars. A Kentucky native, she and her spirited Westie, Petunia, traded Manhattan for Amelia Island in 2019. She launched The Curious Columnist in 2022 and most recently wrote for Business Insider. More quirky commentary awaits at CuriousColumnist.com. Email her at Jennifer@CuriousColumnist.com.
