Get behind me, Cuervo
So: I’ve decided to give up drinking for good.
Not that I was much of a lush anyway. I’ve been, at best, a wannabe drunkard. I won’t go into the whole crummy story, but it involves a 95-degree day in Phoenix, potato salad, an [outdoor rock concert], free tequilla, and me throwing up repeatedly in front of my aunt & uncle, several cousins, one of my aunt’s coworkers, and at least 12 people I’d never met.
That was my Saturday evening. Sometime during the 48 hour hangover that followed, it occured to me that drinking alcohol is just controlled self-poisoning. In the span of a few minutes, it can turn a fun evening into a life-or-death situation.
I broke my best pair of sunglasses. I lost the umbrella [Pat Dougherty] had given me– not that it was a particularly special umbrella, but it reminded me of the last time I’d lost my umbrella, under similar circustances and while suffering a similarly catastrophic hangover. In a weird stroke of deja vu, I later realized– since being incapacitatingly nauseous gives you lots of time for reflection– that I was even wearing the exact same clothes I’d been back then, right down to the socks.
The whole coincidence of it seems like Karma crossing the line, beating me over the head with how I’d said “I’ll never do that again” last time. The trouble is I’m too much of a string bean to handle much liquor, and too much of a crowd-follower to stop when I should. After two lost umbrellas, two nights spent clinging to life in a booze-soaked Hawaiian shirt , and another great weekend ground to a halt, I’m starting to get a hint that the universe is trying to tell me something. Actually, the message seems pretty clear: Stay off the devil’s elixer, kid.
So that’s that.
