By Angela Almeida
Opinions Editor
At the end, a person is supposed to have the words to say. In a phone conversation with mom, “I love you” precedes the dial tone. Before a dance performance, “good luck” offsets the curtain call. Even before a drive one block away, “be safe” are the parting words. So, given as it is my last column, some profound statement should now follow suit.
Easier said than done.
In truth, this is the offspring of my procrastination. I kept waiting for the moment. Rather than conning you with a contrived memory, I wanted to find the experience. And though it did eventually come – inconveniently one day before my deadline – it came.
Now I only wish the words would do the same.
I’ll start from the beginning. It was a Saturday night and my friends and I had gotten tickets to a quasi-renowned DJ Klaas. He was playing at the Lizard Lounge (and considering my friend was newly legal) the tickets were my gift to her.
Walking in, the club seemed to have all the common fixtures. LED lights blanketed the morally questionable go-go dancers. Strobes from the DJ booth showed the place was far beyond max capacity. We were in the throes of our hedonism – a place toxic to the teenage heart.
Think Night at the Roxbury meets a 21st century Saturday Night Fever. A group of Italian guys, whom we creatively named “the Italians,” were downed in leather, white jackets. One Italian, Nikko, told us he was from Rome. Shortly thereafter, he was on stage thrashing about with the presence of Apollo.
We danced until dawn and came home safe. A few hours later, we awoke to attend a service honoring graduating seniors at my mom’s church. As I am agnostic, I would feel wrong claiming it as if it were my own.
There, the priest called the seniors to the front of the congregation. We were given a standing ovation by weeping parents and peered up at longingly by children from the youth chapel. This is a new level of sinning, I thought to myself.
Five hours before, I had been in a place resembling most parents’ nightmares. Now, I was standing atop a pulpit of judgment. I felt sacrilegious. The priest pressed his thumb to my forehead and smiled. Staring at me, he spoke about the “realm of possibility.”
My humble morning coupled with my radical night was within that realm. However polarizing these moments were, they showed our capacity to live. And as I thought longer about his three words, my guilt rightfully dissipated.
At the club, we let go. Problems were checked at the door and we were free. In church, we got the moral dose of valuing thy neighbor as thyself. And although I did not share in the same ecclesial convictions as those around me, I saw the value in their unity.
The realm of possibility. The voice of the priest still echoes in my mind. We were given life, and in those twelve or so hours, made the most of it.
True experiences can’t be marginalized into aphorisms. So instead of trying, I prefer to present the concept of the indefinite. As we proceed on through college and beyond, we should live those moments that can hardly be put into words.
Even if it means spending a time or two in confession.
