Summer Sixteen-Personal Narrative

-Who does not remember when Drake dropped his iconic single “Summer Sixteen” and how he started the summer with good vibes. It is actually so funny to me how almost everyone can remember summer ’16 so clearly because it was that iconic. Well at least it was for me. In my culture, every summer all Eritrean soccer teams from different countries all over the world meet in one city in the United States for a week-long tournament to prove who is the best. July 2016, it was in Oakland, California and luckily for my first year attending I had my squad of friends with me. They were Simon, Filmon, Aman, Bana, Senait, Mereb and my older sister, Mical. I have never been on vacation, the type of vacation where you leave your home state, without my parents so I had no idea what this trip

could turn out to be or how I would act.
-During our trip, we made a lot of friends that stayed in the same hotel as us. We all split and bought two suites on the highest floors. It was a Marriott hotel in the city of Oakland with the most ethereal view of the city lights and mountains. Oakland was like a whole other planet to me. The whole west coast to be honest. It was so urban, the building and streets all had artwork and the people who walked them were dressed in the dopest clothes. They had a fashion sense I never knew of or only seen on Instagram, of course because in Florida all I know how to dress is for the heat.
-What really had me stirred happened on the second day of our vacation. On July 6, my sister, Mical, being the early bird she is woke us all up to have breakfast in our hotel. While we were all eating, a group of girls from Toronto that Mical befriended on the first day walked up to us all excited yapping about some party. They soon explained and showed us a flier to a yacht party on Oakland’s Bay area. We all suddenly got charged up and went upstairs to get ready for the event at noon. I felt in my heart though as I was getting ready that something was wrong. I am so use to things taking a turn so I took another look at the flier and say that the flier said “21 and up”. In that moment my heart shattered, for my mood was ruined. I was only 16 years at this time, so the youngest in my group, everyone else was 19 through 24. How I dread being the baby of all my friend groups. But everyone just told me to relax and just go check it out. Which made no sense to me, but I still got in and the Uber with everyone to head to Bay Area.
-Once we arrived to Bay Area, I could smell the sea and saw all the pretty, polished boats lined up on the board walk.

It was packed I tell you. Just by looking at the crowd I could tell the gigantic white boat that was 3 stories was where the party was being hosted. Antsy and annoyed was what I was feeling because how the hell was I getting into this party! I was wasting my time. All of a sudden, my friends were pulling out their IDs and fake IDs (shaking my head). There was no hesitance to when I started calling them all traitors. As a result my sister told me to walk around and ask other females if they had an extra ID or to do the old pass back trick with me at the gate. So, I went searching around the board walk and found a brown skin curly haired girl like me and asked if I could use her ID or if she had a spare. Sparingly she did have an extra one, but it was a fake ID. And yes it did not look legit. The girl told me to relax and just use it because it “never gave her problems”. What is funny is I never got her real name. When I walked back to my friends and showed them the ID they all started cackling at me because the age on it was not even suffice to 21 and the picture was

ridiculous.
-At this point I am annoyed and just want to go back to the city. Next thing you Nazareth, another girl from Vancouver my sister befriended from our hotel, was walking around making sure everyone had their tickets ready. “Tickets!?” I hollered. To answer your thought, yes you have to buy a ticket to get on the boat. In my mind, I was too afraid to ask thank god Simon did and Nazareth answered “Fifty dollars” with a smile. That is half of one hundred. Was she crazy? Was Beyoncé going to perform? That is a ridiculous price to get in a function. Nazareth was nice enough to knock down the price to forty dollars, but she said there are no refunds. I contemplated for a few minutes. I already though I was wasting my time, I did not need to waste anything more especially my money. All my friends, even my sister, got a ticket so I just had the “fuck it” mindset and payed the girl. I regretted it as soon as she walked away because I am definitely not getting onto that yacht.
-Opposite to just standing around waiting for the hosts to come and open the tall gait to the boats, we started roaming the beach and visiting the local shops. Mical suddenly got a call from the Toronto girls we saw earlier, Yasmine and Asmait, they said they just got to Bay Area. Let me tell you one thing about these girls, they are some wild party animals. I admired that about them they let loose easily and have fun. When started walking towards their car they started whispering to us to come close. Puzzled we were, but we did so. Asmait handed Aman a water bottle, but water is not golden. They were hollering “Kill it!” and he chugged half of it and handed it to my sister. Yup it was tequila. Yasmine handed me one and was hollering “Kill it! Kill it!” and everyone was hyping me up so I downed almost three quarters of the bottle and chased it with my sprite. It was actually comical how everyone glared at me in shock. What felt like 10 minutes, I was way past tipsy, and that is all I have ever been. A whole mess is what I was walking sideways.
-Prior to my whole situation it got worse because soon the hosts were letting people through the gates to the yacht and I could barely walk to the line. Without delay God was trying so hard for me to not get past those gaits because I saw that a cop was checking IDs. Instantly I started spazzing out like a chihuahua that has been electrocuted because first I am drunk, I am underage- for Christ’s sake I am not even 18, and I have a fake ID on me. In my head, I was thinking of a cool street name I could call myself in jail and how disappointed my parents would be and not bail me out just to teach me a lesson. I low-key shed a tear because of the forty dollars I wasted. But my friends were pushing me ahead. Those traitors made me go first on purpose. Finally, I was at the gate and the cop did not even take half a second to look at my ID and maneuvered me past the gate. As I turned to look back at my friends we all had the same dumbfounded expression. We made the stretch path to the yacht looked like a NFL locker room the way we were all stupidly high fiving one another, jumping, and screeching.
-In that present time, you would have thought after I got on that boat I would still behave. But that would be a lie I was wilding out like I was not surrounded by other people who could tell I finessed my way in. As a result, though I realized that it is normal to take risks and let loose when in your youth. That paranoid and nervous mindset was not good for me mentally and physically because it held me back from other situations that could have been great memories.