I have a love-hate relationship with alcohol. And by love-hate I mean I hate that I love it so much. Without it I could be in shape, wouldn’t be nearly as confused by the Grateful Dead, and I would have avoided what is simply known as “The Parking Meter Affair.” (But that’s another blog)

I lot of people ask me about the first time I got drunk. Surprisingly, to them at least, I never drank in high school choosing instead to wait until college. But the first time I got drunk? Hmmm, that would be when I was 3.

Oh stop acting all indignant. Shit happens. This is how this particular “shit” happened:

My sister had a party for her first communion because nothing says congratulations for being able to receive your lord’s body and blood on a weekly basis like a good kegger. We had a family party/barbecue in the back yard. I think it was 1975, but the details were fuzzy to me because I was 3 and DID YOU FORGET, I GOT DRUNK!!!???

So during the party I heard a couple of uncles talking about how the keg “is not good anymore” the next day and that beer was “pretty much just old stale water” anyways.

Fast forward to the next morning, around 6:30. My brother and I get up, as we normally did, to watch cartoons. As was our routine, I poured us both cereal (Life cereal if you must know) and brought it down to the family room. On the way downstairs I notice the day-old keg in the rec room.

So we start eating the cereal and I say to my brother Sean, who was refreshingly gullible and easy to influence, hey little brother (he was 2, but a really mature 2) I heard that beer is just water the next day. The cups are still over there, want me to pour us some?

You might wonder how I knew how to pour it, complete with the pumping action? Well it’s a cool thing to watch for a 3 year old. And, you need to understand, I think my parents had children for the express purpose of doing chores and things such as tending the keg. (And let’s face it, if I had a 4 year old son, you can bet your bottom dollar I’d teach him that too, to impress all my friends)

So I pour us two cups of beer from the (allegedly) safe keg. Surely it was all foam, if there was even foam left, I bring the cups into the family room and to the glowing light of Woody Woodpecker we clink our glasses “cheers” because we had already been taught that. (My parents made me teach myself how to tie my own shoes, but were more than happy to teach us “cheers”).

What happened next? I don’t remember because Sean and I passed out.

Soggy Life cereal. Two cups of warm beer. Two children, combined age of 5, drunk in the family room.

In reality, we probably had a couple of sips and just gently fell back to sleep. The cups were mostly full and I’m pretty sure I didn’t refill our glasses. Though I might have blacked out, you never know.

So  don’t think my parents were feeding us liquor at that age, though I suppose they could have taken the tap off the keg. I don’t remember if I even liked it. But I do remember my head spinning later in the day when the radio played the Grateful Dead…….

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