TWO BEERS IN FIVE DAYS!

My drinking problem began in high school and I'm pretty sure my Dad is partly to blame.  If I stopped writing now you would completely have the wrong idea.  I never did have an alcoholic drink in high school, but I did think about it and that was the problem.

At some point in high school my Dad said to me as he pointed to the bar in our TV room, "If you ever want a drink let me know."  I think I lost all interest at that moment.  When most people are excited about something, I usually have little interest.  The lottery-never played, smoking a cigarette-never lit up, drinking coffee in the morning-never tried it, can't wait to drink alcohol-never cared about it.  Even getting a driver's license-I was not in a hurry and I waited for four months after my birthday to take the test.

Why? I don't know, I guess I'm just a rebel.  When I read the poem in high school, "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, it meant a lot to me.  The poem ends with this:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Back to drinking: it was February 19th 1979, which was my 18th birthday and a half and we had a major snowstorm.  Fairleigh Dickinson University, where I went to school, was closed. My roommate and I went to the campus pub and I had my first beer.  My reaction was, "eh".  I wasn't impressed.  Maybe twice in my life I drank a beer and thought something other than, "eh."  I think they were hot days and the beer tasted good.  Over the years there have been many, many years that I had one beer or less.  In college one night I had four beers at a party and there's a picture of me and I look like I had four beers.  I didn't enjoy the beer that night either.  When we go out to eat now I usually order two waters and I tell the server, "I'm a big drinker."

However, two weeks ago on December 1, my wife and I were invited to a small party to celebrate a friend's 72nd birthday at his house.  He offered me a beer and I took one.  We ate pizza(which is a food I usually say, "eh" too also, and I drank the whole beer and it was, "eh."  Five days later my roommate from college and the best man at our wedding, came to Myrtle Beach to visit.  We hadn't seen him in 15 years and we went out to dinner.  This was the same roommate that almost 40 years ago I had my first beer with.  I ordered a beer to celebrate all the beers I haven't enjoyed in my life.

This Saturday, we will be going out to eat to celebrate my daughter graduating from GEORGIA TECH.  Do I dare have THREE beers in two weeks? I wouldn't count on it. I haven't had three beers in one month since college, why break that record?