I was 15 years old when I first went to a party where we got our hands on substantial quantities of alcohol. It was like letting children loose in a candy store. There was that "forbidden fruit" aura around it. It didn't work out very well for any of us. One guy passed out in the front yard. Since we were in a semi-secluded area, with the neighbors quite a distance away, we just threw a blanket over him and stuck a pillow under his head. He lay there all night.
As for me...no one, not once in my life, ever told me not to drink a quart of beer and a bottle of wine, especially one right after the other, within an hour. I even remember the brands – Budweiser and an awful (and awfully cheap) wine called Annie Green Springs, which didn't taste much better than mouthwash. About the only thing I remember is waking up and, when I opened my eyes, finding I was blind. Everything was totally black. Worse, when I felt around, I found I was apparently in a coffin. And, it seemed, some sort of a very usual earthquake was going on. Everything was spinning in circles. I couldn't see a darn thing, but I knew I was spinning around, all right. Blind, stuck in a coffin, in an earthquake. And barely 15 years old.
My friends told me the next thing they heard is a voice from the closet yelling, "Let me out of here!" Somehow, I had passed out in a closet. To this day I have no idea how I got in there.
After the closet door was opened, and I staggered out (or maybe crawled), I realized everything was spinning around, not outside of me, but on the inside. And I knew I was going to be very, very sick.
I barely made it to the bathroom, where I attempted to barf up a lung. Then I lay down on the floor of the bathroom and fell asleep. Okay, I passed out again. I remember I was on my back, with my hands folded across my chest. All I needed was a flower in my hands, and I could have passed for a corpse.
As bad as that was, years later I read an account by the humorist P.J. O'Rourke where he had passed out while drunk and when he opened his eyes, found he had also gone blind. Only everything was white. Then he realized he had his head in a toilet bowl.
Someone finally came in the bathroom and woke me up. I think it was a choice of move or get thrown up on. There were several others essentially in the same shape I was in. I made it to a recliner in the living room, where I lay, with no desire whatsoever to move.
Then, something happened which made me think that God was chortling over the whole escapade. A lesson in responsible alcohol use, you could say. A girl asked me to dance. I almost looked behind me. Who, me? Obviously, she thought I was a lot cuter than I did. Maybe she was drunk, too. After all, studies have been done that shows when people drink the opposite sex becomes 25% more attractive. I figured if she was drunk enough, I could probably make it up to the level of Hop Frop from the Edgar Allen Poe story.
She was dressed in the traditional week-end manner of girls in my high school – cut-off jeans and a halter top. When you're 15 years old, that sort of look gets permanently imprinted not only on your mind, but apparently in your genes, where it gets passed on to your kids.
She actually held out both hands and pulled me to my feet. Good thing it was a slow dance, since I can't dance. All I had to do is wobble back and forth, with her supporting me more than me supporting her.
The song that was playing on the record player (yes, record player – there were no CDs then) – the Flamingos' "I Only Have Eyes For You" – is also permanently stamped into my brain. It always bring to mind the fact that was the first time I had my hand on a girl's bare back. And even through all my sickness there was still that intense, numinous feeling that I can only describe as awe ("My love is a kind of blind love...I only have eyes for you..."). That's when you realize what the lyrics in all those songs mean.
Here's where things get really funny. During the song she looked up at me with a look I had never seen before, but I knew I was actually going to get a kiss. Instead I found all the slow dancing had done some unfortunate things to my insides.
Instead of kissing her, I blurted, "I'm going to be sick!" and turned and went for the sliding door. The bathroom was too far away. Since it was cool outside, the sliding door was open.
The screen door was not.
I suspect I looked just like Peter Boyle's version of Frankenstein in Young Frankenstein, when he ran from the Blind Hermit who had poured hot soup in his lap and then lit his thumb on fire. With my left hand stretched out in front of me, and my right hand clamped over my mouth, and stumbling toward the door (but not going "Argh! Argh! " like Boyle, but instead "Mmmph! Mmnph!") I crashed through the screen door at a full-tilt boogie, bending the frame and pulling the whole door lose from the jamb. The door fell in front of me, which I then stepped on and put my foot through. It was like I was wearing a gigantic snowshoe I couldn't get off.
And then I fell down, and up came the Cap'n Crunch I had for breakfast, those horrible chokeburgers (aka "hamburgers") that all schools serve, and I think a couple of hangnails. Everyone is the living room cheered, whistled and clapped.
I never did get that kiss.
Ever the good soldier, at about 1 a.m. I marched home, feeling about as depressed and stupid as I had ever felt in my life. I collapsed in my bed until 1 p.m. the next day. Usually, on a Saturday morning, my mother would wake me up by banging the vacuum cleaner against my bedframe, but this time she didn't do it. Maybe when she opened the bedroom door she could smell the booze oozing out of my pores.
I didn't feel so hot when I woke up. I didn't feel anywhere near right until Saturday afternoon. I realized what I had was that mysterious disorder known as a "hangover." I didn't go anywhere Saturday night.
After that unforgettable Friday night, I very quickly learned to moderate my drinking. These days, it consists of a weekly glass of German white wine known as Auslese. And about half-a-dozen times a year, Guinness Stout. And since that night, I have never, ever thrown up anywhere near a girl again.
But for many of the kids, during high school and college...they were as irresponsible as could be. The college I went to used to have drunken riots downtown.
It took me years to figure out the problem. Much of American culture – and especially the busybody know as the State – unfortunately desires a Utopia that consists of getting rid of biological pleasures like alcohol. This, however, is impossible. Utopia on earth is impossible. Religiously speaking, it's blasphemy, and rightfully so, since the Utopian dreams of the 20th century led to the deaths of almost 200 million people.
There is no Heaven on earth, and there is no perfection on earth. Yet, for some reason, many Americans think there are solutions to age-old problems. There aren't; there are, as Thomas Sowell has pointed out in A Conflict of Visions, only trade-offs.
A true conservative understands there are very few solutions, but many trade-offs. The Utopian (and the leftist) believes there are solutions, almost always embodied in the laws, force and coercion of the State. Some Americans think they can ban what they see as imperfection, through the force of law. Make a law, and the problem will go away. Har.
Prohibition was one of those attempts. Everyone with half a brain knew it wouldn't work, and would only increase crime. Unfortunately, Prohibition pretty much created organized crime, which we still have with us today.
The foolish prudish attempts to deal with alcohol use among teenagers by telling them not to use it – especially coupled with the idea they won't use it if you don't give them any knowledge about it – is what led to that first party I attended. None of us knew a thing about alcohol. Not one adult – including our parents – had told us a thing about the responsible use of alcohol. I guess they assumed if they didn't tell us anything about it, we wouldn't use it.
Boy, were they wrong.
Some years ago I was talking to a French man about alcohol use in France. He said children were given water with a little bit of wine in it, and as time went by, more wine was added until it was pure wine. Wine was traditional with meals in nearly every home, he told me. And alcoholism in France? I asked him. It exists, but nothing like what I've seen here, he answered.
In other words, French children were taught the responsible use of alcohol at a young age. In the US any adult who gave their children wine would be arrested and have their kids taken from them. And parents who responsibly buy alcohol for teenagers and then monitor the parties – as they should – also end up arrested. I guess it's wiser for the kids to get the booze themselves, without adult supervision, and then pass out in closets and front yards.
Another time, when I talking to some German teenagers, they told me they could drink in bars at 16, but couldn't drive until 18. That way, they had two years to learn to drink before they were allowed to drive. In the US, it's the other way around: you get your license at 16, and even though the legal age for drinking is usually 21, it's a joke and everyone knows it. So what we end up with is 16-year-olds drinking and driving and having no idea how to handle it.
Occasionally I'll get someone telling me Prohibition was a good thing, for religious reasons. My answer to them is that they should read the favorable things the Bible says about the responsible use of wine. Best of all, they should read what the Gospels says about Jesus drinking wine while at parties. And I've never read a word in the Bible about alcohol being illegal.
I once had a minister tell me Jesus didn't drink wine, and didn't turn water into wine. He said it was grape juice. I told him that without refrigeration and pasteurization all grape juice automatically turns into wine. Maybe horrible wine, but still wine. There was no grape juice thousands of years ago, not unless freshly pressed and immediately consumed. He told me Jesus still turned the water into grape juice. I consider his attitude...irresponsible.
I was involved in raising three kids whose parents were divorced. Their father wasn't around much. When they were teenagers they used to ask their mother – and me – to buy them alcohol. We did. The rules were clear: they drank only in the house when we were there, they could not drive, and their friends had to stay until the effects wore off. They obeyed us, even though things did get kind of noisy in the basement. Not one of the kids involved ended up with an alcohol problem. None of them drink much, since it never had that "forbidden fruit" aura around it. Which is what we get when people try to ban it.
When I was younger I was puzzled why some foreigners were so amused at certain attitudes in America. After all, isn't this the greatest country in the world? The one to which everyone wants to move? As time went by, through, I actually became embarrassed at some of the attitudes in this country. It's the irresponsibility I see, you know.
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