Author: Brandon Andreasen

Generally speaking, you don’t need a gun to your head to do stupid things. Most of the time, you do stupid things because you want to and/or think it’s a good idea. As people age, that desire to do stupid things tends to subside, especially when you throw esoteric concepts like children and mortgages into the mix. So why did I think it was a good idea to eat nine hotdogs and drink nine beers in under two hours? At a St. Louis Cardinals game of all places!?!

The fast answer to the question is “I don’t know why I did it.” The long answer requires a bit of unpacking, a lot of reflection, and the constant gnawing need to catch up for lost time.

We can probably back track to when I was young. I definitely did not grow up popular. I definitely had trouble interacting with people. Most people just say i’m autistic, but I actually have an anxiety disorder that makes me hate public spaces. I hate crowds. I hate talking in front of crowds. I’ve never felt comfortable in my own skin. That lent heavily to my inability to be socialable and scratch out a level of popularity that would make me look back in high school in the kind of wistful way so many do. A million jokes are made about people who never quite got over high school. But getting as far away from those years as possible while still having a yearning desire to make those youthful mistakes is probably just as laughable, if not the specific reason I keep finding myself in the messes I get myself in.