You want drama, go to a play.

Don't bring it to the parties.

This is something which I find more and more tiresome as I meander through this year's mid-August drunken stupor. It seems every time more than a half a dozen people gather, there is some terribly awkward yet unspoken tension between select parties that renders what should be a pleasant and excitable group of teenagers into something resembling those wakes that people in the South throw when they realize one of their children/neighbors/sports-heroes is gay. Absolutely miserable. Let me tell you.

I'm not going to go on a long rant about how it seems everyone around me, including me, acts like a child when alcohol enters the picture, because that's really a tired and narrow argument. The truth is that we all act like children all the time, and drinking seems more and more like a pretense toward adulthood than anything else. Put a beer in someone's hand and suddenly there emerges this small, troll-like voice from the back of their head insidiously reminding them that they ought to emulate a 21-year-old, as if to prove to himself, his friends, the world, or the great Bog himself, maybe, that he's mature (read: sleazy) enough for the whole ritual of promiscuity and borrowed punchlines.

I'm not complaining about alcohol. I'm complaining that people can't tell the difference between an adult acting like a kid, and a kid acting like an adult, so we end up with kids trying to act like adults acting like kids. And what happens then? The saddest parody you'll ever see.

Most people can remember fights in Kindergarten. Teachers would need to intervene, either to mediate the problem or separate the kids from each other. I guess we were supposed to learn how to do these things on our own, and we got it halfway. We've mastered the self-prescribed time-out. Someone you didn't want to see just walked into the party, and what happens? Do you say hello? Extend a good-natured hand? No, you move across the room, bring along the kids from your lunch table, and act as if you're the motherfucking Montagues and Capulets. You give each other the evil eye and yell "Sluts!" or something, but it's mostly just a Let's-not-talk-about-it-and-maybe-it-will-go-away type of affair. Time-outs are meant as a last resort, but it's always the first thing people try.

You know, if I saw my parents doing something like that, I'd tell them to grow the fuck up. If I saw some high school freshmen doing that, I'd tell them to grow the fuck up: "Walk over, extend the peace pipe, bite the bullet, and stop having a lousy time just so you can keep your illusory sense of superiority. There is no honor in grudges, no fealty to animosity."

I'd say these things, but they're hypocritical. My friends do it and I do it and we're all a bunch of babies. I think the problem is that we never got beat up enough as kids, on the whole. You get into a fistfight with someone, wind up bleeding from the temple with a half-dozen bruised ribs, and you realize all those squabbles you had with what's-her-face weren't worth getting your lace panties in a bundle over. Sounds sociopathic, but pain--real pain, physical pain--really puts things in perspective. I'm not saying I advocate self mutilation or anything...but I'm also not saying that I don't.

So I guess here's my point, strange as it may sound: I am so tired of record-scratch moments at every party I attend that I'd gladly start a brawl just to get the stupid out of our systems. If you're down for that, then do your part. Punch a stranger in the face. Everything's crazy.