A flock of kids milling about on the porch. The red plastic cups in their grips, symbols of pride, filled with liquid gold.

The gray hair I found in my chinstrap beard mortified me. Suddenly, the harsh reality sets in that I’m not growing, but fading.

That may seem a bit dramatic at age 22, but it is the truth. My reaction is not without irony. I grew facial hair, for the first time in my life, because of my clandestine desire to look like a campus sage.

Instead of reveling in my new status as a seasoned University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee veteran, I grieve the loss of the inspired youth.

I recall my first time traveling the UWM campus feeling like a walkabout. Now the campus is mapped out in such detail that my travels to and from classes have become zombie-like shuffles — eyes glazed over drifting past the all-too-recognizable structures.

Years of routine, heartbreak and escalating responsibility have left me a mere shell of the thrilled kid that zipped through the experiences of college life with a gusto that I can only experience again through evaporating memories.

Sure, I still have experiences that bring joy. Although, I wonder if anything will feel like that moment of escape during the first years of college.

These emotions resurfaced when I left the bar scene for a night to visit a ghost of college past: the house party.

As I approached the shanty of a house, I saw a flock of kids milling about on the porch. The red plastic cups in their grips, symbols of pride, filled with liquid gold.

I couldn’t tell if they were all longtime friends, or strangers embracing their shared escape from parental monitoring. They were the latter. I kept hearing them asking, “What’s your name again?”

A flicker in their eyes, and demeanor, resembled a freshness only seen in first-year students submerged in new substances. In these decrepit houses they throw themselves wildly into this newness, letting it drip from themselves drowning everyone in their getaway from former lives of structure.

Surrounded by unfamiliarity, perhaps their excitement stems from the chance to start over and reinvent themselves.

Entering the drunkard’s gala I couldn’t help but laugh at the glorification alcohol was receiving. Each person I rubbed against en-route to the keg oozed hyper-sexuality. I witnessed pairs of girls and boys sneak off to ease blazing urges.

This was, after all, a celebration of irresponsibility. I wondered if people looked at me as “that guy.” The one you see and think, “Shouldn’t he be plopped on a bar stool somewhere?” The current of rabble-rousers brought me to the event’s heart: the keg.

Each person who left with a full cup wore a look of success, as if they had just accomplished a dastardly feat and were ready to join their fellows in allowing this foreign substance transform them.

I felt like I was on stage — the cast of people around me acting more drunk than they probably were. Being used to seeing true drunks at bars, I scoffed at them with a deranged sense of smugness thinking, “You don’t know drunk. I know drunk.”

Interestingly, the conversations I carried on with these strangers contained an eagerness lost at the bars. Screaming over the bass of horrible rap music I could see these people were genuinely gleeful to meet someone new. Where as at bars, meeting feels mechanical and superficial.

My jaunt into a time nearly forgotten ended comically. Someone screamed, “Police!” Bodies scattered like roaches in a spotlight. I calmly downed my beer, and sauntered out the back door.

The faces I met that night grew faint in my mind as I walked home. I came to the conclusion that people don’t live a single life, but many. For a time we are irresponsible, dreamers, realists, foreigners, professionals, students, children, teens, parents, boyfriends/girlfriends or husbands/wives.

The people who encompassed our lives entirely can disappear, or be forgotten, in the blink of an eye.

As time pushes us from one life into the next, all we can do is use our minds as museums. And from time to time, we will wander their halls to view display cases featuring the lives forgotten.

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