I hosted a foreign exchange student in high school. It was junior year, the height of hormones, and we were all excited to receive our guests on account of Lane Meyer and Monique Junot; they would all look like her, right? Anyway, we were anxious to inoculate our Dresdeners with all things Amerikanische that we decided to throw a party. We rounded up all of the fake identification we could muster and took off for the store, returning with a Suzuki Samurai’s-worth of Natural Ice and Boone’s Farm. We gleefully skipped up the steps with our booty, oblivious to the fact that our guests were sitting on the corner of the porch, bored out of their $300 Levi’s.

It went something like this:

“Here, have a drink!”
“Nein, Danke. I treenk maerteenees.”

Bettina was 15-years old.

If you don’t know me by now, you should know that I have been bartending for a little over a decade. It is not my only means of survival, but it has been my most educational - you get to see the best people at their worst and the worst people at their best. I’ve seen state representatives persuaded by lobbyists and I’ve toasted election-day results, I’ve seen wedding rings volleyed back and forth and one-knee proposals, I’ve celebrated births and I’ve drank in remembrance; the lessons I have learned have been immeasurable. But this moment in time, this one moment where I clashed cultures and cocked my head at a spry young fifteen-year girl old who casually, but politely, said, “I drink martinis” impacted the way I thought about drinking more than any Friday night behind the pine.

• We should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!  - Cassio, in Othello.

Chilling some lime vodka and topping it off with some Crunk or some Drank or some Rockstar might taste like Care Bear marrow, but at the end of the night, what do you have? A fifteen-year old sugar boner and delusional expectations about Europeans going topless at their beaches and pools so they will do the same in your parents’ hot tub, right? Look beyond the sugar veneers and the camoflavor to see your drink for what it’s worth. Learn how to approach the bar and order with confidence. Seek out the past and make an old-timey cocktail like dear old dad.

Me? I am going to happily raise our son with a glass of wine at the dinner table, simply because I want him to have a palette and a sense of responsibility. Moreover, I want him to know how to operate 12 ounces before he (God help us) is old enough to operate 2000 pounds. I want him to drink for sensation, not sport, like my priggish foreign exchange student. I’m not saying the Europeans have perfected drinking or that the bulk of Americans are doing it wrong, but I see the good and the bad almost nightly. Here’s to hoping that we, on the other side of the pond, can do it better than we are right now.

That being said, it looks like I’m writing on a Tumblr with some pretty fine people. I don’t know how I ended up here, but I’m honored that I was asked to contribute. I hope we can clank a real glass in the near future.

So drink, not bombs; drive, not drunk.

Do you like that? It’s my catchphrase. I thought I needed a catchphrase. Give me a break, I’m new at this.

Posted at 12:45pm and tagged with: Introductions, James,.