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I'm reminded of a time, many years ago, when we were on a family vacation in Hawaii. For the last few days we were staying at a rather fancy hotel/resort and decided to take dinner at the hotel restaurant.
So we all sit down for dinner and my older daughter, would have been sixteen at the time, orders a virgin something-or-other to drink. My youngest son, 7, decides he wants to be cool like his big sis and orders the same virgin something-or-other.
And then we were all having a good time, enjoying the meal, the vacation, and lots of laughs. The boy in particular was laughing quite a bit. It's like those times when you get something stuck in your funny bone, and you just keep laughing harder and harder, and that made everybody at the table happier too. I started to figure something wasn't quite right when the boy started making rather snarky, somewhat Andy Cappish comments about his mother. But I was thinking he must be all the excitement, he was drunk on adrenaline.
No sir. It wasn't until later when he spoke in a restaurant-resounding voice "I GOTTA TAKE A WHIZ," stood up awkwardly, stumbled off to the restroom, tripped over a lady's purse, cursed like a sailor, then got up and continued his indirect path to the restroom that I finally put two and two together. So I grabbed the remnants of his drink, and sure enough, underneath the sugary banana and pineapple juice there was the slightest but unmistakeable taste of hard booze. It wasn't adrenaline the kid was drunk on. The bar had screwed up the order.
Oh, God, I was pissed. I made a big scene right there in front of the wait staff, the bartender, and their managers. I kind of regret it too, because now that I'm older and wiser I'd have probably just sat back and smelled the roses, it's now one of my fonder vacation memories. Anyways, as I'm chewing out the staff, my boy comes charging out of the restroom without any pants on, streaks the whole restaurant to numerous gasps, laughs, and some cheers (I think those were from his sisters), runs out into the hotel lobby and vomits his dinner and a decidedly non-virgin something-or-other all over the concierge. Atta way to file a complaint, son!
Anyway, we spent the next day nursing his first hangover, which was fine because we needed a day of rest in the room anyways. We got a free meal out of it. And a story to embarass him with when he was a teenager.
So the moral of this story is: You don't need to wait until college in order to learn all there is to know about alcohol.
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