I have a lot of thoughts and many of them are self serving, some are beneficial to others and some are thoughts people actually enjoy thinking about after reading one of these novella-style blog posts on this site. As the Internet knows, this week is one of my twice a year celebration with friends and family at my home. New Years’ Eve isn’t why we’re celebrating. It’s that we all have this week off work and it makes sense that we get together with great food, stories and engage in an experiment of sustainable living with 10 people within the confines of a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere. I feel like we’re running a village and it’s a blast.
A friend of mine, a local who lives 50 miles away was going to come. I think he’s 18 which isn’t unusual for me. I only have one male friend in my life and he’s 21. The others are 16-20 because, for some reason, I see the intellectual side of a man, the man that’s still very excited about breaking barriers and has yet to get into the distractions that go along with adulthood like debt, drinking, drugs or chasing sex. This dymanic for me is why I volunteer at Boys’ Camps and Big Brother programs. It’s why I am my happiest when I’m with Dad teaching Aikido class surrounded but those of us who decided to skip after work parties to go to a gym and fight for 3 hours 5 nights a week. To paint how remarkable the people are I surround myself with, this 18 year old friend that lives 50 miles away didn’t meet me in town or at some local event. We met in Belgium when he was an exchange student for a year and showed me around town because, as a Twitter follower, he saw I was in Belgium looking for things to do. What a smart guy to spend a year in another country and, to my knowledge, not get into any trouble, work his butt off and come back to the US with a different perspective and a drive to one day travel again. It’s amazing.
He and I don’t hang out much and I invited him to spend NYE with us at the cabin and we picked up spare air mattresses to accommodate him. Another one of his online friends is here as well. I got a message that he won’t be coming because, at his age, there’s just too much liquor in my house. I’ll be reaching out to his parents because they both follow me on Twitter as well but I completely understand their decision and stand behind it. It still inspired this blog post.
I spent the last few months acquiring special beers. It was a fun project of mine and despite the fact I don’t drink that much, I’ve really enjoyed it! I have ten of the top 15 beers in the world in my cellar. Pretty rad. Given the week off from work, multitude of friends who are here and relaxed nature of this, we’ve had a lot of beer. I mean we as in I’ve been splitting each tiny bottle among people here, tasting and then having another. I tasted 10 beers last night but never once had a buzz. In fact, I’ve never had a hangover or been so drunk that my night is ruined. This entire week, I haven’t even felt tipsy and could operate a car because we’re drinking beers by the ounce and not by the bottle. I think because I’m being followed on Twitter by my friend’s parents, it would appear that I have only been drinking and this is more akin to a toga party than a week of relaxation where our mornings are spent sipping lattes and enjoying omelets with classical Indian music and great books. I spent the last 24 hours cooking this huge BBQ meal for my friends and last night we had delicious fried catfish and french fries. I even got a special mayo for my friend to enjoy since he loves the stuff after being in Belgium for a year. Basically, there have been no hangovers, no fights and, despite all of the cooking, the house has remained spotless (which makes me very happy).
I guess I can understand the need to keep an 18 year old man away from a house full of drinking much in the same way that you don’t send your 18 year old son to Las Vegas.
The wishes of parents is more important than the decision of our judges and police. I grew up in a household where there wasn’t a single alcoholic drink and there isn’t to this day. No one in my family drinks from immediate to extended family. I’m the first of my kind so I make a point to take month long breaks from alcohol and not order alcohol at restaurants just to make sure I’m still able to function without the chemical. I take alcohol serious in a collecting / culinary fashion and less about what happens after drinking it. I care more about the process of aging a case of monk beer than drinking it and that rubs off on many of my friends. So, the decision to keep an 18 year old away from a house of liquor is understandable. My only hope for my awesome friend is that he’s able to come another time because I challenged him to a game of Call of Duty and he thinks I can’t beat him.
The thing about parents is that they don’t always do things that make sense to us but if you remember the fact that you’ll be one eventually, you’ll understand and respect the decisions they make and how lucky we are to have them in our lives. Here’s to parents because I am where I am because of mine.
Further reading:
- An Introduction to Beer…from a 25 year old. (Part 1) / (Part 2)
- I’m Thankful For my Friends…
- Wait. A Teenager Made a Mistake? Wow. I’m Astonished!
- Tips for “Getting Here”
- My Thoughts on Growing Up Digital – via NYTIMES
- My Yearly Alcohol Detox
- Living life like a video game…think about it.
- “Manliness Doesn’t Just Happen”