The Four Most Embarrassing Things You Did as a Teenager

“Dude, Green Day are the Beatles of our generation.”

Now that you’ve survived spending time at home with your younger relatives, all those old memories are coming back to you.  Remember your creepy loyal and unrequited love for The One, who dated the ugly skank with the stripper name instead of you?[1] Remember that time your stupid mean “friend” ditched the Fabulous Five Femme Fatales to go to Homecoming in her stupid boyfriend’s group and totally spent the whole dance frenching with him? Remember changing for gym class? Taylor Swift, why isn’t any of this in the song about being fifteen?

This, apparently, is what teenage siblings are for: to remind you of the awful weird bitchy creature you were just a few short years ago. And now you realize: everyone was probably really embarrassed on your behalf, too. Here’s a list of the things you really shouldn’t have been proud of.[2]

Maroon 5: The Ultimate Orgasm Enabler

This band is determined to sex you up at least seven different way from Sunday

Thursday, June 30th seemed like such a normal day. I woke up with a digestive system full of well-fermented anguish, after hours of dreaming about talking yaks. I proceeded to head to my workplace – the inspiration for Dante’s Divine Comedy – and by the time the late afternoon rolled around, I had nothing to anticipate for the evening other than a ham and turkey sandwich and several hours of internet stalking. It was then, at this point of despair, that I received a call from a friend – a call that would change my life. It consisted of two questions:

Friend: “Are you busy tonight?”

Me: “Well, not unless getting my time for Sporcle’s “Capitals of the World” quiz below 4 minutes somehow qualifies as busy. Why?”

Friend: Do you want to come to the Maroon 5 concert with me?

Me: [3 to 5 minutes of unfiltered expletives]

So there it was. My average evening of memorizing the hometowns of everyone in the Northwestern University Class of 2015 Facebook group had suddenly turned into what I knew would be a night more than worthy of a Sherman Ave review.

In a word, Maroon 5 was: SO FUCKING AMAZING I CAN’T EVEN COMPREHEND IT THEY WERE EXCELLENT LIVE PERFORMERS TOO BUT THEIR MUSIC IS JUST SO FUCKING GOOD I LOVE THEIR STYLE SO MUCH BECAUSE THEY VERY EFFECTIVELY PUT JAZZ INTO POP MUSIC AND ADAM LEVINE’S VOICE IS LIKE A STICK OF BUTTER WRAPPED IN BACON HANDED TO YOU ON A WARM GOLDEN PLATE BY PIPPA FUCKING MIDDLETON.

Average fan 6 seconds into "Harder to Breathe"

Okay, so I exceeded the word limit. But given the number of times I’ve failed to meet it (e.g. college essays), I can make an exception. There is really no way to put “one word” to such an amazing performance – the closest one could come would be a wombination, like “orjazzmic.” Did I discover some noticeably non-platonic feelings for Adam Levine? Probably. But more importantly, I finally learned what the ‘5’ in Maroon 5 signifies: the number of dozens of orgasms that any given audience member will have at one of their concerts.