Having a teenager in college, I watch with amusement as she tries to figure out how to get her hands on some liquor. The kids have some tricks we didn’t have, like pouring vodka from Dad’s liquor cabinet into an empty Poland Springs bottle. But I feel for them. When we were in college, 18 was the legal drinking age, so freshmen and seniors alike could all enjoy a rollicking keg party, and puke and pass out with impunity!

It made me think of the first time I tried to buy alcohol as an underage teen.

Corporate America must have known the park near the Seaford train station was a hangout for smoking pot, because directly across Sunrise Highway were a Burger King and an Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips.

My friend Victor and I were going to hang out there one summer night, because rumor had it that cool girls would hang out there. Since we knew going in that the cool girls — actually, ANY girls — wanted no part of us, we decided we’d need alcohol. But this was around 1970 or ’71, and we were 16, and visibly underage. “You got a fake ID?” Victor asked. “No. But you know what? My brother’s 18. I’ll ask him if I can borrow his ID to buy some beer.” Which, looking back, was interesting, because Victor has a brother who was into his 20s at that time, and we knew he was a big drinker, among other chemical pursuits. Why we didn’t just ask him to get us some beer remains an unsolved mystery to this day.

Anyway, I don’t have the patience to retell the entire conversation with my brother Alan over the ID right now, but suffice it to say, I got his birth certificate. HOME RUN! I mean, is there any more concrete proof of your age than your birth certificate? (Apparently there is, but I’m getting ahead of myself.) I gave Victor the news, and we met later on at this house to walk to the train station. Along the way, I received quite clear instructions: “Budweiser. Get nothing else. Budweiser.” The rest of the conversation is recreated here to the best of my recollection. “Got it, bud,” I replied. “Wait,” Victor said. “Are you saying ‘Got it .. Bud,’ meaning you get that you’re buying Bud, or are you saying ‘Got it, bud,’ meaning ‘I understand, friend.'” (We had done what the kids today call ‘pre-gaming.’) “Isn’t it the same thing either way?” I asked. We continued on in silence after that.

I’ll admit I was quite a bit scared that I’d get caught buying beer illegally, and taken away by the cops. But I had the birth certificate! We approached the beer distributor across Washington Avenue from Burger King and the train station, and my heart was kind of racing. Though there weren’t many people in the store as I went in, I clearly recall each of their heads turning to look at me. The music had stopped, those there were suddenly silent. Now in full panic, I moved quickly toward the beer section and grabbed a six pack.

I strode boldly to the counter. “You got ID?” the clerk asked. He was a man of about 25 … or 52, I really can’t remember. I was avoiding eye contact at all costs. But I do remember pulling the document out of my pocket and flipping it so very cavalierly onto the counter, like I just laid down a royal flush to steal the pot from a four-of-a-kind.

“How do I know this is you?” he asked.
“What?” I hadn’t thought of that. Struggling to find something to say, this is what I came up with: “It’s me.”
“I can’t sell you beer without a photo ID.” (There’s that better proof of age thing.)
“Listen, man, it’s me.. I don’t have driver’s license, my draft card didn’t come yet, and my social security card doesn’t have my birthday on it. So this is what I have.”

Looking back, again, trying to buy beer with that should have gotten me smacked in the face by the cashier. I mean, nothing screams ‘You’re under the legal age’ quite like the concrete proof of a birth certificate.

The rest was a blur, but suffice it to say, I left with the beer. I ran to the train station, found Victor easily (it turns out the park there was NOT a big hangout, as we had heard. And, no girls of any kind.) Still, I had a six-pack on me, so at least the night would not be a total loss.

I reached into the bag and handed Victor a beer. “What am I holding?” he asked.
“A beer?”
“What KIND of beer?”

I looked at the can. “Rheingold?” In my panic, I grabbed the first six of red and white cans, as I knew the Bud label to be. If the expression “You had ONE JOB” had been around then, I’m sure Victor would have used it on me. I felt stupid for a minute. But you know what? We were 16. We were outside. We had beer.

The night would most definitely NOT be a total loss.

I know, I know .. ‘I don’t call.. I don’t write.’ Sorry, but I’ve been out in the field, doing research for this blog. I’ll tell you all about it, but first, Carrie wants me to wash ‘the field’ off me.

Back. So listen…
You’re familiar with the law of attraction, right? I’m not talking about what you felt when you first met your significant other (that still a thing?). I’m talking about how you never see, say, a certain car on the road until you might want to buy one, and then it seems that every other car is that exact make and model.

So it was during Christmas vacation, where at the airport, I was attracted to a line of guys who had to be patted down because the X-ray machine would trigger their pacemakers! Prior to my own surgery in March, I didn’t know ANYONE who had a pacemaker!

Then, at breakfast one morning, we ran into a former neighbor that we hadn’t seen in years, only to find out that he and I had our implants done THE SAME WEEK! I put down my bacon, egg and cheese sandwich, opting for the fruit Carrie was ‘suggesting’ I eat instead.

On vacation, the law of attraction lets us find ‘our people’ around the hotel. This was never more apparent than during the beach chaise reservation competition, which began at 6 each morning. That’s where I learned: Don’t turn in your towels at the end of the day, take them to your room. That way, you can feel your way in the pre-dawn darkness to find and save the 11 perfect lounges you won’t actually come back down to until noon — pissing off literally every other guest at the hotel. (Guilty as charged.)

HOW TO SAVE 11 LOUNGE CHAIRS*:
1) left flip-flop
2) right flip-flop
3) chapstick
4) suntan lotion
5) book
6) ear buds
7) Uhhh. yesterday’s bathing suit? (A real conversation starter!)
8) empty coffee cup
9) lid from empty coffee cup
10) stirrer and sugar packets
11) shells

*assumes two towels per chaise

I mentioned to one of the other seat-savers one morning how crazy it was with the lounge chairs. “It’s not that bad here. We were at the Ritz-Carlton in February, and you had to give the guy so much money every day to even get a seat.” I asked if his name was Richard, and if so, if it would be OK for me to call him ‘Dick.’ Later, Carrie and I met an older woman on the beach looking at some pieces of coral that had washed up. “Ooh, I like that one, and that one,” she said. Me: “You like them? Five bucks each.” She: “You’re selling these?” Me: “No.” She: “Oh, I just came off a cruise ship. My husband died last month.”

I was aghast (and agape!) that she would say that to someone she had met all of 40 seconds earlier, and responded with the only thing I could think of… “No charge for the coral.”

And so too does the law of attraction impact this blog. Since I’ve started writing about what it’s like to be getting old, that is all people are talking about.

I happened over the long New Year’s weekend to be lying on the couch, channel-surfing (THAT still a thing??), when I came upon a TV special by the comedian Sinbad. Remember him? He’s still going strong, and as sharp as ever. And what was he talking about? Getting old. He explained why old people need to be with partners their own age; why men shouldn’t date younger women. The reason? Because a younger woman will ask an older man why he’s making faces at her, while an older woman will instantly recognize that as a stroke! She’ll save his life, while the younger woman might visit once in a while at the rehab facility, primarily to ask if she can have his house, since he’s not using it anymore! Funny stuff.

Dec. 31, 2018. Our getting older group had New Year’s dinner reservations. I was thinking that I was chilly, and the music was loud, but I didn’t say anything, because hey, I didn’t want to seem like an old guy! And besides … drinks! The fun began when the folks older than us got up to dance. They weren’t actually dancing, more like the lurching of someone who’s been tasered. We ate, we partied, we wore hats and blew into horns, and best of all, we were sitting down… watched over by the ghosts of crazy New Years past while recognizing this is what New Year present has become.

As an aside, I’d like to point out that my brother, who is older, was at my even older cousin’s house, and if I know Alan (my brother, not my cousin), here’s how his night went: Should auld acquain… “Well, we made it,” he’d say. “It’s late. Happy new year, everyone, and goodbye! Gotta get up at 5 because I’m… retired?? And it’s a… holiday???”

Compare that to how Alan and I celebrated New Year’s Eve in 1976. I was 20. Alan wasn’t. He was plain and simply, just older than me. Well, we were in Times Square, in a time when you could leave to find a bathroom and come back to your spot with nary a cavity search! We drank a lot, the ball fell, we screamed, we drank a lot, and fell back to the luxurious (ahem!) Hotel Collingwood, where we had booked one room for about 18 college friends from Maryland — and we drank a lot more. When one by one we began to crash on top of each other, I think it was Alan who struck gold by finding a nice empty space on the floor — of the closet. Next morning, we went to a bar to watch the mighty Terrapins fall to the Cougars of the University of Houston in the 1977 Cotton Bowl.

I recall that as being one of the great nights of my life. Now that I see it in writing, I’m thinking that this New Year’s Eve was SO much better!!

I’ve been asked so many times if I’ve made any resolutions. I don’t make resolutions, as I have never seen one through. Can I be a better person in 2019? Honestly? I don’t think so. 🙂 Can I lose weight? Probably… though I’ve done it so many times, I don’t see the need to prove it again. My beautiful daughter Lindsey baked a beautiful chocolate cake over that weekend, and I could have walked away from it, easy. But that would have been rude, and a cold dismissal of the all the work she put into it. So I ate it heartily, savoring every moist, delicious bite. I chased it with a coffee, and then chased that with the anti-reflux drug Pantoprazole — which, I must point out, was not at all a reflection on the cake.

Anyway, another year passes into history. I wish you a great 2019!