*Insert Lawyer Pun Here*

A few years ago it seemed like everyone I knew was in graduate school. The good news for me was that their enrollment in various Masters programs allowed me the opportunity to pretend as if I were as well: I often found myself at law school, med school, or business school functions for Students Only, griping about imaginary student loans and that horrible class entitled Torts. But those crafty grad students usually saw through my lies within the first awkward conversation. I was then introduced as “My friend from undergrad,” and was immediately inundated with questions about it was like out there in the Real World (something, let’s face it, I actually know absolutely nothing about). I always attended these events hoping to score some new friends and maybe even meet a guy whose main goal in life wasn’t to achieve the ever elusive trifecta of Fantasy Baseball, Football, and Basketball champion. But, alas, nothing of the sort ever transpired (much to my my mother’s chagrin, it should be noted), and being at a law school Bar Review turned out to be exactly the same as being at College Night for $1 beers on a Thursday. Sigh.

Two years ago, however, my friend Kiki, the one I left in a snowbank on New Year’s Eve, invited me to her law school formal. “It’ll be fun!” she promised. The event was to be held at a fancy hotel in Boston on a Saturday night. Kiki and her non-law school boyfriend, along with what seemed like three dozen friends, had reserved a hotel room for the evening for pre-gaming and post-gaming and various in-between activities, none of which struck me as even mildly enticing, so I said I’d just meet her there when the formal started. (As a side note: who even knows that many people? Let alone knows that many people who are all willing to contribute to and attend the same thing? I have serious issues just rounding up “friends” to come out for my birthday.)

I arrived late, hoping to avoid being the one non-law school school weirdo there, alone on the dance floor, a vodka tonic in hand. But instead, I was met with a snaking line of excessively intoxicated law students waiting to gain admittance, and none of whom I could ever imagine representing me in a court of law at any point in even the most distant of futures. There was lots of, “Ohmygodddddd, and then he TEXTED me!” and “Whatever. She is, like, so totally stupid,” and various other cringe worthy comments I endured while waiting in a line of poorly frocked girls and boys in crooked bow ties.

At the front of the line, I accepted two drink tickets and a plastic Hawaiian lei, checked my coat in what looked like it was once a public shower facility, and entered the main hall where the formal was being held. Thankfully, I found Kiki almost instantly: not so thankfully, she had been drinking for close to six hours already, and was far more enthused about the formal than I could ever imagine being myself. She dragged me around to meet all her friends. Putting a cupcake in each of my hands, she told every boy who came within a twenty foot radius of us, “This is my friend Sasi! She is a fabulous writer!” which even though said while under the influence, made me feel like less of a loser than I usually do: Kiki is by far my biggest fan and also most avid proponent of me “owning” this whole Wannabe-Author schtick I’ve got going on, and every time someone asks what I do, she jumps in before I can start in on my self-deprecation and says “She’s an author!” It’s untrue, but sweet, and I will happily accept the fact at least one person out there has faith in me. The future lawyers at the formal, however, once receiving the news of my highly unsound life choice of becoming a writer, tightly smiled and were all suddenly overcome by an intense urge to head to the bathroom, scampering away as if terrified they might catch whatever ghastly malady had befallen me to make such a downright stupid decision. 

After it was clear not a single dude in the entire place was even going to be mildly interested, we headed to the dance floor. I’m unsure how many of you have witnessed several hundred law students trying to Get Jiggy Wit’ It, but let me tell you, it is a sight to behold. I was just waiting for some kid to bring out his glowsticks, or perhaps a portable DDR mat. I did my best to partake, although, those two drink tickets were not nearly enough to catch me up to Kiki’s level or to make me think dancing in such a public forum was even a remotely reasonable idea. (Although, as shown below, I apparently quite enthusiastically acquiesced.) At one point, Kiki’s boyfriend tried to dip her and instead let her fall flat on her back on the floor slick with punch and watered-down beers. We then decided it would be wise to leave, and with the event coming to a close at a whopping 12:30 am, there wasn’t really much of a choice anyway.

Kiki bounded back upstairs to the hotel room after asking me around twenty-five times if I was OK to get back home. I assured her I’d be fine, and as I watched hundreds of coupled-up law students groping each other on their way out, I slipped outside alone, to wait in the freezing cold for a cab.

If you don’t know much about Boston, you should know this: there are no cabs. None. On a Saturday night, if you decide to go home post-midnight, you will probably wait for a cab for a solid forty-five minutes. I stood outside in the can queue with a group of people who clearly had not been at the formal: there was a pair of scantily clad transvestites, a group of men who I am sure were extras on Duck Dynasty, and a girl who kept hiccuping and crying because she couldn’t find one of her shoes (which, judging by the looks of the other one, was no travesty). So I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually, when it was after two in the morning, I was sober as a bird, and all alone in a sea full of freaks, I did what I’ve sadly found myself doing fairly frequently these days when I need rescuing: I regrettably called my mom.

Now two in the morning, I traipsed across Copley Square all alone, my legs so cold I could no longer feel my knees, and waited on the corner for my mother to fetch my twenty-six year old self. I climbed in the car, tired, cold, and frustrated, and heard just what I was dying to hear after a weirdly sober evening where I was blatantly looked over like some checkout girl at Costco: “Sooooooo, meet any nice lawyers?” A Jewish mother’s work is never done.