The shock and awe of my aunts as they watched the host hand me a beer was simply a joy to watch. The beer didn’t taste great, but seeing how they reacted made it worth it.
I had kept myself free of alcohol strictly on the basis of age—I know most people I knew had started drinking after age 18 or at least tried some types of wines and such by the time they made it to college, but a stubborn ideal inside of me kept making me say no anytime I had an opportunity. It wasn’t like it was often—My friends never tried to peer pressure me in any way with substances, and mostly it was the times my parents tried to get me to drink so that they’d see my first time. By then, I had stopped trusting them—even family didn’t shake me. The young teacher’s pet in me was afraid of breaking any rule, no matter how useless it seemed. So, the day I turned 21, I had my first drink. A shot of straight vodka.
I almost swore off of drinking based on that alone.
But I had been trying out more things as I had time, making some tequila sunrises to drink as I played games with friends out of just the wish to enjoy some different flavors. New experiences were rare things to enjoy, and they always managed to fuel my creativity for storytelling and writing. Even if it became harder for me to find the time with work taking up each weekend, I still kept notes of every time I ran into something unique so I could mull over it during my sleepless nights back from work.
I’m serious. If you want, I could tell you the story of when I visited a Chuck E. Cheese this same summer. I’ve got the notes in my notebook, but I didn’t think you’d really care to hear about that story.
Where was I? Ah, right.
Being of age to drink was the only reminder I had that time had moved forward—after 18 I found my age muddled and difficult to recall on command whenever asked, and every birthday was a reminder that I had stopped caring. I only really thought to remember if someone was older or younger than me. It wasn’t difficult to get the information I needed that way.
Which is why I was shocked when my coworkers were talking about summer homework.
I understand that I got to work pretty late in my life—the friends I had with jobs during their senior years always regaled me with tales of their workplace and I found plenty of people in college who were working on the side. But I still reeled back as I heard the people I was working with talking about their AP classes.
“Yeah, I’m 17” one of them told me. I felt my heart sink.
I’m not very keen on calling myself young at 21, but it was more often the case. I found my friends and family were often much older than I was, or sometimes just barely my age. The only people I talked to who were younger were likely little cousins or some of the friends I had online who were starting up their first years of college.
It took a bit more time to realize why it was that I didn’t think of it. These coworkers I had were more adept than I was, simply due to their time working here before I had. I naturally assumed they would be my seniors based on the amount of times they had helped me.
I guess I realized then I had my fair share of that being manifest in my own life. The way some people misjudged my age based on my experiences, like when people wouldn’t realize I was a teenager when I did raids in Destiny 2 and I took the lead. Or times my ineptitude might have shown I was as young as I was.
I tried to think less about the latter example.
I remember chatting with them after the shift, standing outside in the cool night air with 3 cars still parked outside. 3 people. And of them, I wasn’t the youngest. Looking at that younger coworker, I was feeling a strange form of loss. Not exactly a loss of innocence, but a loss of my youth. Every drive still brought me around the town I grew up in, and I lived a short walk away from my middle and high school. But the more I had grown, the further I started to drift away from them. I imagined my past self, staring at a future with glistening eyes and no handle on themself as their school life continued to spiral out of control. And now, finding stable ground, and looking for more. A past self lost in work and trouble that left them wanting a normal life, and a future me trying to find something more than this small town and a simple world.
But no matter how much I changed, it doesn’t change the past me. My new dreams didn’t matter in the eyes of my past self. So I’m left picking up the pieces and trying to push them into a new puzzle. Every success of my past was trying to hold up the weight of a dream that felt impossible. All they got me was a driver’s license and a simple job, and it felt like I was going to be stuck at 18 forever.
Maybe that’s why drinking gave me such a sense of pride. My achievements weren’t anything special for my age. In my eyes, I was just as far through life as this 17 year old who could drive and work all the same as me. My only benefit was the way my natural age gave me access to something new. I guess what I’m trying to say is that no matter how proud I was of my progress, it was only one step up a mountain of catching up I had to do. My mom had no respect for it—jokes at my expense, and not a moment of congratulations for my work that summer.
That’s why I was so happy you were cheering me on, I suppose.