A couple of months ago it came to my attention that I had been holding the wrong conception of what the phrase ‘breaking the seal’ means. And, for those even less in touch with the ‘hip’ lingo than I clearly am, this (sadly) has nothing to do with seals 🙁
So what exactly does it mean to ‘break the seal?’ As Urban Dictionary states it, “when a person who is drunk pees for the first time since being drunk… after they “break the seal” they feel like they have to pee every 5 minutes.” And what exactly did I think breaking the seal meant? I thought that if you peed after drinking alcohol, your intoxication would start wearing off. Essentially, I thought that if you peed, you just directly peed out all the alcohol and suddenly started getting less drunk. By this logic, I must also have thought that not pooping meant staying full longer and not burping meant eventually exploding. Luckily, I never extrapolated that far. But, the problem with my skewed view was that it also represented a reason to not want to pee while drinking. So, I never realized how mistaken I was.
For years I thought that breaking the seal meant sobering up, with absolutely zero idea as to what the true meaning was. I’d be out with friends, drinking the little alcohol we could get our grubby teenage hands on from cleaned out GoGo Squeez apple sauce containers, completely oblivious. Alcohol was truly a scarce resource. So when we would debate as to whether we should make a bathroom pit-stop, I’d join my friends in advocating against it on the basis that we didn’t want to waste our precious supply–not because we didn’t want to have to pee all night.
But, think about all the sweet confidence boosts I missed from drunk girls in the bathroom 🙁 No “I loooooooove your outfit”s or “you’re soooooo pretty”s or “you’re my new best friend!!!!”s! I can never make up those years of missed #grlpwr. All I can do is hope my testament here guides someone back to the dim light of basement bathrooms, filled with women’s empowerment and love.