Yesterday was my 21st birthday. In honor of the American tradition of (to quote a friend) “getting hella drunk” when turning 21, we went to a place called 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. The problem, however, is this: I don’t like the taste of alcohol.
I always feel like I’m drinking paint thinner (er, not that I would know what that tastes like…) and, while I’ve heard it tastes better the more inebriated you get, I’ve never been motivated enough to get to that point. So, sober I’ve stayed, despite my dad’s best efforts to turn me on to wine or tequila—but that’s a story for another post.
So, back to 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. The place is aptly named; they serve 99 different beers, and if you drink every one you get your name on the wall. There are four portraits up there of guys who have “done the wall” 25 times—that’s 2475 beers, over 350 gallons of alcohol. Crazy.
The last time we’d gone to this restaurant was in the 90s, so for nostalgia’s sake I ordered my then-favorite item on the menu, a Hawaiian Burger. To drink, Papa got a Sheaf Stout, the darkest beer any of us had ever seen. I got a Harp ale and Mama got a Heineken. I was envious of Kyle; he got a Coke.
Predictably, the beer tasted like mud to me; well, a picture’s worth a thousand words, so look at the first one. I asked Kyle for a sip of Coke, just for the flavor, but he refused. So I arm wrestled him for it.
Well, I don’t know what exactly happened, but at some point in the past couple years since I’ve arm-wrestled him, Kyle got really strong. Must be all that Karate. He threw me down pretty quickly, even in the rematch where I used the leverage of the table to my advantage. It didn’t help, of course, that I had a habit of giggling uncontrollably when I started losing.
Finally, the food came and we started eating. I was determined to make the most of my birthday, so I slowly but surely finished off my pint, using the food to mask the flavor. And lo and behold, for the first time in my life, I felt drunk! Well, drunk isn’t exactly the word… but I felt like somebody had just hit me over the head with a sack of potatoes. Or like I’d been spinning around real fast like I used to do as a kid. It was a curious feeling, but not as fun as they make it look in the commercials. Not that I was really expecting that, though.
So, now I can say I’ve thrown back at least one beer in my life… but I don’t think I’ll be making the Wall anytime soon.
