Brief anecdote about sparkling beverages … I remember that when I was about 11 or 12 years old, I celebrated New Year’s Eve at a friend’s house in Buffalo. It was a sleep over, there were four of us, and the big excitement was that we were permitted to drink Cold Duck, a very cheap substitute for champagne, to celebrate. I suppose the hosting parents presumed that, because we were confined to one room in the house, we couldn’t get into too much trouble. Clearly neophytes in the art of drinking, we did everything wrong. We drank much too fast (Cold Duck tastes like soda pop … and sweet, carbonated alcohol is a bad combination), and we drank much too much. To cinch the deal, we dined exclusively on potato chips and junk food, and ate nothing substantial or nutritious. By the time America’s Oldest Living Teenager was barking out the final countdown, all of us were quite inebriated, and one of us became very sick, projectile vomiting all over the T.V. room. It was like a scene from The Exorcist. Three of us managed to hold our liquor, but this one putz really drove the bus to barf town. As he wretched and gagged, and as gobs of drool streamed down off his beet red face, we had to endure an endless medly of “I’M DYING … I NEED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL BECAUSE I’M DYING … HELP ME, I’M DYING!” I must have heard him say that a hundred times before he finally shut up and passed out, still breathing very well I might add. The whole episode lasted perhaps ten minutes tops, during which the rest of us tried desperately to avoid the omnipresent and multi-directional backsplash. I and the host then spent the next two hours washing up this mob hit of puke. What a buzz kill! Most of it ended up in the victim’s sleeping bag, but a fair amount reached remote corners of the room. I learned some important lessons about drinking that New Year’s Eve. First of all, nothing will sober you up faster than the smell of barf. If you do barf, you should definitely be made to clean up after yourself. Finally, stay away from Cold Duck, that stuff is deadly. As for wretched excess, I’m still working on that lesson. Though there have been other stories about drinking in excess, that was the first and most memorable.
Right now (New Year‘s Day), I’m sitting at the picture window writing this report on my new laptop and watching the snow-covered lake and the storm brewing to the south. The weather has been mild this week, but we’re expecting a cold snap, and with it some lake effect streamers. Today, the news guys are reviewing the events of 2009 … Bernie Madoff the scam artist, the death of Michael Jackson and other celebrities, and of course, the devastating fallout from the downturn in the economy. And this was the year my Dad finally passed away. As I approach my fifty-fifth year, and I think back to the changes I’ve seen since my first memories in the mid-1950’s, I wonder what it must have been like to have been born in 1910 and to have watched the events of the past 98 years unfold. Good luck with your resolutions, and let‘s hope that 2010 is better than 2009..
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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