Those were the best days of my life

I’m meeting an old friend this Friday for a couple of drinks and a little what the hell have you been up to catch-up.  I’m a big fan of Jen, but I think she is perpetually stuck in Peter Pan syndrome.  She graduated from WSU in 2000 (the same year I did), and is one of the few people I know that has been with the same company the entire time she has been out of school.  I have no idea how much she makes, but I’m sure she’s doing okay after 10 years of faithful service.  Okay so there’s the background.

We were chatting about this Friday and possible plans when she intimated that unless I was buying, it would have to be just drinks at one of our places.  This was not (as you may be thinking) in any way a ruse to get me alone – or get me to buy drinks. She is totally broke until payday; which is actually this Friday, but she thought was the 1st.  She checked her account as we were chatting, and without an ounce of sheepishness stated, “ wow, I have $6.31 to my name I thought it was more like $11.00.”  I’m not one to judge, and I have no idea what circumstance created this, but it got me thinking about the last time I was that broke.

When I first finished college I was very very much in said Peter Pan mode.  I spent my first two years after graduation working as a Personal Trainer at 24 Hour Fitness.  My life at this point was a lot closer to the “Jersey Shore” than that of a young professional.  We went out to clubs three times a week, we lifted weights and tanned every single day, and we spent all of our money on formfitting club gear.  This however was not a substantial amount of money, and we became really apt at hitting the sales and finding bargains.  I don’t remember exactly how much I made, but it was probably less than a $1000 a month.  I was able to live on this because I had almost no expenses.  I lived at my friends house, which his parents had given to him when they bought a new one, free of rent.  It was also free of heat, double pain windows, a dishwasher and hot water.  It was a lot like camping, especially in the winter months when I slept in a hoodie and a mummy bag.  I showered at the gym, lived on Taco Bell and employee discounted protein supplements.  I had no car payments (drove the old Mazda I’d had since high school), and I’m pretty sure my dad paid my insurance (or maybe I didn’t have it for awhile – I don’t remember).  I do remember that I went about six months without a drivers license, because I didn’t pay to have it renewed.  I think the only reason I finally renewed it was because certain clubs wouldn’t let me in with an expired ID.

So how could you afford to go out three times a week?  Well we became very apt at doing that on the cheap also.  One of us was almost always dating a waitress or bartender at ‘the hot club’, which took care of the cover charge, and usually made it very cheap to drink.  On nights that we didn’t have a hookup, we would spend the first hour sitting in the car (parked somewhere in Belltown or Pioneer Square) listening to music and drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonades (high in alcohol and easy to pound).  Then we would go to a club that had after hours about 15 minutes prior to last call.  Usually clubs raised their prices for after hours, because they didn’t have the alcohol revenue, and drunk horny dudes were eager to keep the party going.  This allowed us to precede the lines and pay a reduced cover charge.  We would buy one Corona, grab a recently vacated seat, and wait for the hordes and hordes of drunk/tripping girls to flood in.  I’m pretty sure my parents were proud at that point that they had paid for my education.