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In less than two months, my twin boys will turn 21. That scares me on several levels, one because it makes me feel older than I already am, and two because now they can LEGALLY drink.
The second one shouldn't scare me because we -- mostly my wife -- have schooled them the past few years on how to be responsible now that they are considered adults. I also believe that we -- mostly me -- have put the fear of God into them, just like my mother did to me and my siblings. At least I think they are afraid of what would happen should they do something bad.
Dominic and Vincent turn 21 in May in the middle of the week. Vincent is excited because he wants to go out that night to celebrate.
No.
He will be home from college for the summer and working his summer job. If you have to get up Thursday morning, there is no birthday drinking on a Wednesday ... not in this household. Dominic is already in the workforce, having chosen a vocation instead of college. He also knows you don't go out on a Wednesday night when you get up each morning at 6 a.m.
I told them we would take them out and buy them dinner and a drink for their birthday on Saturday when the family is off. I also told them we would NOT get them drunk. I don't think that's a good thing to do anyways.
Drinking and driving is simply nothing to mess with. Having Ann Marie Franco as your mom is nothing to mess with either.
When I turned 21, my friends tried to get me drunk, but it never worked. I was once told that if you eat something every time you take a drink, you shouldn't get drunk. I didn't, and because we went to several places that night back in 1986, I got to sample many menu items that May 16 evening.
I've only ever been inebriated twice in my 58 years on this earth. Once in college when I was 21 and one time in 1991 when I was on a trip to Colorado. One involved terry cloth shorts and the other the mile-high atmosphere near Denver. That's it. Not a drinker. Not big on the taste.
The way I was raised, beer and wine were in my home, and though it was not gorged on, it was there, but again, never liked the taste.
My dad used to have those little 7-ounce bottles of Genny or Stegmaier beer. He would let us sip them, but again, yuck! My grandfather next door made wine. What I remember about wine was when we got a cold, my dad would boil it, put some cinnamon in it and give it to us to drink.
Now, I don't think that recipe is anywhere in the New England Journal of Medicine, nor do I remember my brother Tom, who graduated from Pitt's medical school, studying that in class, but it did work on this level ... it knocked out Tom and I so that mom and dad didn't have to hear us coughing all night.
I am not exaggerating here, though nine times out of 10 I usually do in this column, but I call it writer's embellishment. Ask my wife if I drink. When we would go out, she would sometimes have a Kahlua and cream. I would drink 7-Up with cranberry juice. Looked like a drink, but it was good for your prostate.
There were several other reasons why I didn't drink, one being that my mom told me that if I ever was found drunk, she would kill me. My dad was a policeman for 30 years in Altoona, and that would be, what they would call today, bad optics for the department. She said even if she had to go to prison ... I'd still be dead, which meant she got her point across.
There's another reason, too, but you will have to ask me in person when you see me.
Why?
Because my boss/agent, Neil Rudel, wants to keep the humor here in this column on the wholesome "Gomer Pyle: USA" level and that's fine with me. In fact, I'll drink to that, provided it's Pepsi Zero.