Hey, kid, you wanna sip?
Growing up in the '70s, '80s, and '90s - when congregating in person was still the only socializing option - I suspect nearly every kid unlocked this achievement:
I was whisked back to mine during a recent conversation involving the impassioned retelling of childhood close calls.
We were living in a suburb of Pittsburgh in a development of freshly built houses in a rubber-stamp neighborhood. The kind that isn't really a neighborhood so much as it's a residential real estate photocopy, complete with many cul-de-sacs but no outlet. The layout of these developments is wild, such that you can walk through the backyard to a neighbor's house in one minute, but driving there would take five. The summer before my twelfth birthday, my parents and I made that one-minute trek to our neighbor's house for a dinner party.
The dinner is passable enough for me to forget every detail, but perhaps that's more to do with what I witnessed after dinner...and after some of the high school friends of the neighbor's oldest son arrived...and after the neighbors - their parents - left...and after my parents left. Leaving me, a sweet boy, by myself with what ends up being a house party full of high school coeds. This may seem a scathing indictment of my parents' judgment, but two things stand out as exhibits in their defense case: Exhibit A, remember, the houses are less than a minute apart at a pre-teen's jogging pace. So if I get in a jam, at the very least my helpless screams have a decent chance of reaching my house. Exhibit B, a stereotypical high school parents-gone-for-the-weekend party has not yet materialized by the time my parents leave. If I recall correctly, it's me, the three older sons of my neighbors, and one or two of their friends hanging out and playing in the backyard. They have no reason to suspect anything untoward is on its way. I'd also like to believe they trust my judgment enough to know that I'll bail if anything gets too weird.
In a classic stroke of obliviousness, as darkness falls and the backyard party gets louder, I have zero inclination that I'm somewhere I probably shouldn't be. Up until this point, people seem to be having a fine time. There's music, there's laughter, and everyone seems to be very responsibly hydrated. It isn't until the middle son makes a beeline for the tall fescue at the edge of the yard to barf up his freshly shotgunned beer that I clamp onto the realization that an expeditious Irish exit might be a good idea. I'm in a seating area with two benches facing each other. I'm alone on my bench and one of the friends remaining from the dinner party is seated about eight feet across from me. Just as I turn my shoulders to slip away, he drills me with a life-changing fork in the road: "Hey, kid, you wanna sip?", and gestures in my direction with his open can of Rolling Rock. An immediate invasion of countless scenarios floods my imagination, and in the span of milliseconds, I picture full lives spent and all their respective consequences and outcomes based on whether or not I say yes right now to this stranger on this patio. He's one of the friends who attended the dinner, so his face is at least recognizable among the hoard or partygoers. And maybe it's that, or maybe it's his friendly demeanor that opens the door for this response. Either way, without missing a beat, I invoke the heady one-liner I've seen my dad use a hundred times that never gets old:
"No thanks, I'm driving."
If I was an addict, my drug of choice would be reactions like his. Raucous laughter from a total stranger. Ignoring the fact that he's probably on his second six-pack, I stand there beaming, thinking I'm the sharpest comedian since Carlin. My confidence is confirmed when he summons everyone within earshot to tell them what I said when he offered me a drink. A final blip of commotion and laughter follows, and as the attention ebbs, I call it a night.
When word got back to my parents about what happened, they piled on the praise and commended me for making the right choice. The circumstances of the evening all had to align for things to work out this way. And this small event, using only 3 or 4 of the likely 700,000+ hours I'll be on this earth, codifies a bedrock of positive incentives to call on whenever a moral quandary appears. Of course, at the time I had no clue this happened. My adolescent brain only knows I made the older kids laugh once by stealing a joke from my dad. It wasn't until I had that conversation over thirty years later about close calls that I saw what could have been.
My partner in conversation tells of a similar story. A neighborhood party. Limited supervision. The "forbidden" offering. But instead of declining, he decides to have some fun. But while I was free from peer pressure beyond the person making the offer, he had a crowd around, egging him on. And what's more, someone he vehemently disliked was scowling at the idea of him partaking, so the choice was clear. "Piss off my enemies and conjure roars of cheering from an attentive crowd? How could I refuse?" However, despite his story having a happy ending, his middle act - the decade that followed this split decision to say yes - nearly killed him.
That conversation spawned a new appreciation for the part luck plays in my circumstances. We both lived through the same event at around the same age, but the dominos that had to fall for us to choose one path or the other returned two completely different trains of incentives. My incentives all lined up perfectly for me to say no, and his fell the opposite way, leaving him the subject of a much harder life. Jesus Christ, now I'm bummed out. Gonna go call Dad and see if he has any new one-liners.
Thanks for reading.
Quick tip of the week:
It’s fall. And I got’s trees. This year I’m trying something new: mow all the leaves into one big strip. Get out the giant tarp. Rake ‘em onto the tarp. Drag ‘em into the woods. What took hours of bagging and hauling last year, takes 10 minutes of raking and dragging this year. Got trees and a yard? Get a tarp.
Have a great weekend, people.
-Tim
Bonus: Aside of the week:
You may remember the motorcyclist from a few weeks ago. This morning he set a new record. 75mph. Stay safe out there, friends.