Ever find yourself at the wrong party?

Everybody there is having a great time. They’re whoopin’, hollerin’ and dancin’ up a sweat.

Except the music’s just not your vibe. The food is tasteless (think pigs in a blanket). And you no longer drink the cheap beer you might have chugged in college.

I found myself at quite a party Thursday night at Coleman Coliseum. Nick Saban was there, for goodness sakes. As were the cool kids — members of the University of Alabama’s Class of ’25, the kids who started their college journey in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At least some of them were there.

As were proud family members and beaming friends.

At least some of them.

The folks inside had a blast. They whooped, hollered and stood on their feet for 54 minutes. They savored every morsel dished by Donald Trump, carnivorously enjoying every mouthful of the president’s invited-myself commencement address.

Albeit one whose audience did not include all of the graduates., Many, along with their families and UA faculty, eschewed the arena in protest of the most divisive, dismissive and distasteful first 101 days of a presidency in my lifetime.

Decisively not “the most successful first 100 days of any president in the history of this nation,” as if such a preposterous boast could actually be quantified.

Inside, though an impressive 10,000 or so folks — my guess — laughed out loud at countless decidedly unpresidential jokes that I just didn’t find funny at all. They applauded Trump’s familiar concoction of narcissism, hubris, insulting anecdotes about them (people not like him or this audience) and claims that couldn’t be fact-checked fast enough.

If beer had been sold at the arena’s concession stands, there might not have been enough to go around.

Trump found his stage in Tuscaloosa. His much-needed stage.

After 101 days of economic tumult, global disdain, tariff flip-flops, thrusting thousands of federal workers into unemployment with his ex-bestie Elon Musk (proving no “fraud and waste” in the heartless process), callously leaving many around the world to die due to loss of U.S. aid, risking future life-saving scientific discoveries because of NIH cuts, and unabashedly attempting to erase decades of progress addressing racial and gender inequities — whew! — maybe Trump needed this night.

Maybe he needed to be bathed in applause, love and the warmth of his people. In his state.

While spewing more outright lies.

He needed to Gangsta Lean on the podium (though he beat Kamala Harris here by 30% last fall, not the 45% he claimed on Thursday) and regale his people. In his state.

He needed to be comfortable enough to publicly insult his predecessor(s) — like, every president ever — mock transgender athletes, and tout his due-process-less deportation strategy by claiming to have reduced southern border crossings by decidedly not fact-checked, “99.999%.”

“They said you needed legislation to do it, you just needed a new president.”

Roar. Tough Trump’s unmeasurable proclamation, “We’re gonna protect women’s sports,” may have sparked the loudest cheers of the evening. Along with touting the administration’s threats to yank federal funding from Harvard University.

“The next chapter,” he told the graduates, “will not be written by the Harvard Crimson (the university’s student publication) but by the Crimson Tide.”

Okay, that was a good one.

Still, Trump needed to be comfortable enough to say things most people wouldn’t laugh at in public. In most spaces. Yet things that elicited belly-aching guffaws from the folks inside Coleman because, well, it was their party.

I joke with my white friends that they’re my spies. They go into spaces where I may not be invited and then report what they hear, what their peers are saying in private — when people not like them are not around.

There were so few Black faces inside Coleman on Thursday (not counting those there working, including my media peers), it was as if I was in the room, yet hidden beneath Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak — unseen or ignored.

The latter, perhaps. Because on this night, there was no dismantled civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department, no deleted environmental justice department leaving poor communities at so much risk, no blatant conflict in Trump pimpin’ his cryptocurrency, no freaky-fingered Pentagon chief, no burgeoning measles outbreak under a science-phobe health secretary and no slashed $15 million grant to Birmingham City Schools to hire mental health counselors and address gun violence.

Nah, there was none of that.

He and the faithful left all the harsh realities of his second presidency outside — like the Tide locking their toughest foe out of the gym rather than face them on ther court.

Or in court, as Trump is often doing these days.

Inside there was only Trump’s same ol’ same ol’ exhortations that everything before him was the worst there ever was, and everything now and beyond is and will be the best it ever was — all because of him.

Didn’t matter. This was his crowd, this was his stage, this was his state. This was Trump’s America.

We can’t ignore it. And after 101 brutal days, he needed it.

To Trump’s credit, he (or White House speechwriters) knew the room. His primary and oft-intertwined theme Thursday was winning, an homage to Saban’s six national titles in 17 seasons at Alabama.

He also mentioned every prominent Republican in Alabama by name, which could have been an exhaustingly long list.

He even twice shouted out Birmingham, though I’m not certain he’s ever spent a night here. “This state gave us the might of Iron City…,” he proclaimed.

Someone high in the rafters roared.

What’s too bad is this: The primary objective of commencement speeches, no matter the messenger, is to equip and inspire graduates to strive towards their dreams. In that vein, Trump offered several salient nuggets. He claimed 10 “lessons,” but I lost count, and I venture so did the person charged with the teleprompter, which relatively speaking kept Trump on point:

If you think you’re too young to do something great, you’re not.

Think big. If you’re gonna do something, you might as well think big. It costs the same to solve a small problem as a big one … and the result will be smaller.

Work hard, never ever stop.

Don’t lose your momentum. Listen to feedback, think through your plan and keep moving fast.

To change the world you have to be an outsider. Take risks.

Think of yourself as a winner.

Never, ever give up. Don’t find yourself thinking: If I’d just held out a little bit longer.

I’m down with each of these exhortations, though I didn’t whoop, nor holler. Nor break a sweat.

It just wasn’t my party.

It was Trump’s — he sorely needed it.

Let’s be better tomorrow than we are today. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, Instagram @roysj and BlueSky.