ADVICE WITH AGONY ADAM: CONQUERING POST-RAG FEAR

HumourAdvice

21 Mar

After a week off to soak up the (unofficial) RAG Week sun with a metric heap of pints by the Shannon, resident agony aunt Adam is back to answer your burning questions.

Adam, advice please. I’ve got some Godzilla big fear after RAG Week last week. I went out almost every night (like a champ) and generally made it my business to be the craic coordinator of my friend group. Problem is, I’m told, I may have coordinated the craic a little too hard. Worse than that, I have no memory of a fairly hefty portion of the nights out! So my question is, how do I figure out just what the hell I did?!

Honestly I think you’ve been given the gift of a blank slate here. Sometimes it’s best to embrace the bliss of ignorance!

If a tree falls in the woods, and you forgot drunkenly cutting it down, did it really make a noise?

Still, there’s a few ways of sussing this one out. Start inventing pretty wild scenarios in your head to test your friends’ memories.

“Hey, remember on Thursday when I beat Kerstin Mey in a foot race across the Living Bridge?”

“Oh my God, why did you guys let me get on a bus all the way to Dublin to steal that penguin from the zoo? My landlord is going nuts!”

“Why, I repeat, WHY did I read the entire 50 Shades of Grey saga at our Renaissance Lit class on Thursday? What was I even thinking?!”

If your friends just laugh along and say “God yeah, you were pretty far gone all right”, you can rest safe in the knowledge that they haven’t the faintest breeze what happened over RAG Week either.

I learned something on RAG Week that I had sort of suspected but didn’t want to admit is true. My friends don’t really invite me to many of their parties or nights out. I didn’t go out at all last week and, seeing all my friends’ stories and photos, I feel I really missed out. How can I get people to invite me to things more?

I’m really sorry to hear this. My natural instinct is to say “well f**k those guys” and tell you you’re better off finding new friends.

But where’s the fun in that?

What you need is a good old fashioned ruse. You’re going to need access to the wardrobe, phone, family history, PPS number, and preferably the actual face of one of the people in your friend group.

From here, you’ll need to assume their identity completely. I’m talking deep cover here. Once it’s done there’s no going back. You are Derek now. Or whoever.

After that, all you need to do is simply walk into their next party, crack a cold beer, and enjoy.

It might be easiest, just for your cover story, to assume the identity of the one you know best. Cuts down on research time. And for the love of all that’s holy, make sure your new face doesn’t slide off mid-conversation. Take lots of bathroom breaks to check everything’s still in place.

Or, and this might sound wild but go with me here, find some people who are excited to have you around at parties and on nights out.

Adam, everyone thinks I’m an Erasmus student. Everywhere I go. Sometimes they ask me where I’m from. Sometimes they just speak slowly to me and use small words. One bouncer even refused to believe my passport is real. I’m from Dundalk like! How do I go about proving my Irish bona fides?

You’ve got my sympathies. Though let’s be fair, sometimes a Dundalk accent can sound like it’s coming from a different planet altogether!

I can’t help but feel like you’re missing an opportunity here. Think about it, you can be anyone you want to be!

Today you’re Tatyana Matryoshka, an Eastern European medical student with a penchant for creating missing cadavers in the school of medicine. Tomorrow you’re Alois Bertrand, a French postgrad student who seems to have only come to UL to drink port and smoke rollies in a vaguely superior way. The day after, you’re Gerhardt Werner, a German sociologist, and your research into why Irish students feel the need to exclusively wear tracksuits is going to bring a whole new understanding to identity in postcolonial anglophone countries.

When we break free from the shackles of everyday trivialities – silly things like who we are, why we’re in this class, and what our actual real names are – we can be who we were truly meant to be: total messers.

Have fun with it and please don’t blame me for any future identity crises.