I met some friends for dinner and drinks at Sunset Cantina yesterday. The gathering was partially a celebration for med school acceptance, and partially a catch-up with recently graduated alumni. And at 7 p.m. on a Thursday, it seemed everyone else had similar plans for the end of a not-so-long school week as groups of students crowded the hostess stand.
Seated in a booth by the window, we didn’t even open menus. The general consensus was nachos upon nachos upon nachos. All of us, however, did spend minutes perusing the extensive, nearly blinding, list of drinks and special tequilas, finding entertainment in reading the most outrageous drink names (may I suggest a Punch in the Face?).
And then, a recent graduate admitted that she had never been to Sunset before this night.
Everyone at the table expressed genuine shock: ohmigod, how have you never had Sunset nachos? Did you even go here? You don’t know what you’ve been missing.
She excused herself by saying that she had never thought to go before she turned twenty-one. We all nodded and understood almost immediately–I myself can’t exactly remember the last time I sat down to split the full order of layered chips doused with cheddar cheese without also washing it down with a margarita on the rocks with salt. The entire experience of Sunset Cantina seems entirely supported by the combination of multi-colored tortilla chips and tequila.
Then someone else pulled out their phone to show off their not-so-exact ranking system of margaritas–the true sign of a Sunset connoisseur. The same list was employed to order their drink of choice, and only those designated as ones would do.
Once the fiesta-colored plates bearing the mountains peaked with sour cream and guacamole arrived, the sound of the mountain collapsing and the audible movement of jaws replaced conversation. A water pitcher was passed around as though we were all taking part in a religious cleansing of the palette before we shifted the plates on the table for a different flavor experience altogether.
Either I was in a state of nacho-induced coma, or the margarita I ordered was entirely too strong, but when Josh asked, “Have you heard back from grad school?” I felt my face instantly drop. Have I heard back? No, and the wait is eating me alive like a table of hungry college students engorging a vertiginous pile of chips and cheese. (Have I made you hungry yet? I apologize.)
It truly does, in fact, sting every time I see a Facebook status or a tweet about acceptances. The future is less hazy for these lucky seniors, and I am entirely jealous. Of course, I know my moment will arrive sometime in March, and then I can feverishly hunt down an apartment (do I need a roommate?), and possibly a car (how do I obtain car insurance? Can I even afford it?). I spend most of my free time fretting about these what-ifs over which I have no control, while simultaneously being aware that postulating about this life in September is a fruitless, stress-inducing exercise only to be met by grey hair in my twenties (yikes).
The only thing left to do, besides enduring this wait, is to relish in this ability to live in the moment–a weird, liminal frame of existence with which not many share the luxury. And so, for the next few weeks, the only thing I can actively control is that margarita I’ll order from Sunset. I should have copied down that list of rankings.
