We had a custom-made "Beirut" table in our apartment. It had our names on it, we brought it out often and had fun. For a time we were playing almost nightly during our senior year. At that point I was 21, but I drank before I was of age. I drank to excess, I made bad decisions. I think I was lucky that I didn't have enough money for a car while at school, or else the chances that I would have driven drunk would have been very high.
When my uncle Tony was killed by a drunk driver in 1998, leaving his pregnant wife Debbie to raise her three kids under the age of six alone I was so sad. But I didn't stop drinking. We'd go out after work, have a few beers, have a few more beers, have some shots. I'd stumble to the train (again, lucky!) and hate myself the next morning because I needed to be active at work and all I wanted to do was feel better with a minimum of effort.
Kate works at an organization that is making an attempt to change the attitudes about underage drinking in our part of the world. When people ask her what she does they tend to respond in one of two ways:
- "Oh. Interesting... What did you do this weekend?"
- "I think this underage drinking thing is all blown out of proportion. Didn't you ever have a drink before you were old enough?"
The first is a re-direction, the second is a confrontation. Neither gives her work the respect it deserves. She does a hard job that demands a lot of her emotionally and she is a role model to both young and old. I love her and I'm proud of her.
I am done with getting drunk. It's unhealthy, dangerous (for me and others), expensive, and I guess I just don't need it anymore. I think there are also better uses of my time.
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