June 8 - 15, 2000
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Ah, June. This time of year always reminds me of my high-school graduation. I can still see it so clearly after all these years: my classmates and I, clad in our gowns, bidding farewell to our childhoods, throwing open our arms wide to the future. I said goodbye to friends; they weepily said goodbye to me; and my parents -- well, my parents threw us all a big-ass kegger. Small beer
Why alcohol and kids should mix
by Kris Frieswick
Yes, a keg party. The entire senior class was there. My parents and all their friends were there. Even my teachers and the principal were there. At one point, some mean kids from a big nearby city tried to crash the party, and my father and his friends (one of whom was a former Olympic decathlete) greeted them holding my brother's hockey sticks and bats, and the mean kids went away. The adults watched over us, and we watched over them, and each group made sure the other didn't drink too much or get out of hand. (Although my principal did hook up with my English teacher that night. They're married now -- or were, last I heard.)
It was one of the best parties ever. But that was the early '80s. If this event had taken place last year, I'd probably be visiting my parents in Walpole State Prison.
Serving alcohol to minors was illegal even then, so my parents were clearly breaking the law. But no one cared. Why not? Probably because they were doing it responsibly. They made sure no one who was even remotely intoxicated got into a car. The only ones whose keys got yanked were my friend Jim's parents.
But these days, alcohol, and those who serve it to minors, are being treated like Public Scourge Number Two, second only to drugs --an amorphous category that apparently includes everything from Elmer's glue to heroin, or indeed anything that even mildly alters one's consciousness. (I expect to see Raffi on this list soon.)
Alcohol is just another in a long line of things that have fallen victim to "condomization," the mistaken belief that by outlawing the instruments, you can stop the music. Make it hard to get condoms, kids won't screw. Ban drugs, kids won't get high. Criminalize teen alcohol use, and make parents criminals for serving a beer to a minor, and kids won't wrap themselves around telephone poles on graduation day.Clearly, this line of thinking has yielded remarkable results so far.
Even 20 years ago, my parents realized that it's better to teach than to deny. My folks served my brother, my sister, and me an occasional glass of wine with dinner from the age of about 12. When I was 17, we were allowed to drink with our friends at our house . . . after everyone's keys were collected. My mom always said, "I'd rather you do it here, where I can keep an eye on you all."
I know it sounds kind of toady, drinking with your friends with your mom and dad around. But we didn't care . . . hell, we were drinking! And we fell directly into the trap my parents set with their faux nonchalance regarding alcohol. They demystified the whole process -- damn them, they took the evil fun right out of it. And they taught me how to pace myself. I won't claim that I never got shitty drunk as a teenager. Of course I did. But, as an alcoholic friend once said, "I know my limits . . . I've passed out enough times." Difference was, I learned my limits at home. He learned his in the woods, then woke up and drove home.
The laws themselves haven't changed since the day I poured a cold frosty one for my English teacher. But the recent demonization of teen drinking, and the raft of lawsuits holding parents responsible for what their kids do when they drink, forces parents to embrace the whole range of neo-prohibitionist behavior -- spout the "alcohol is evil" party line, urge abstinence, and ban underage drinkers from their homes to protect themselves from prosecution (lest one of the kids sneak out and cause an accident).
This forces kids to learn about alcohol on a more, shall we say, ad hoc basis. Mainly they do it by funneling Heffenreffer at the town landfills and cul-de-sacs and forest clearings of this great land of ours -- all places that they must get to in cars. Which they then use to wrap themselves around the aforementioned telephone poles.
A more liberal, open-minded approach to teaching kids about drinking won't prevent them from partying their brains out in the woods, I know. But if parents could host underage parties without fear of prosecution, maybe little 15-year-old Trevor wouldn't be learning about the perils of mixing milk, blackberry brandy, and tequila in the back seat of a car behind the dumpster at the CVS. No one should have to go through that.
The beneficiaries would also include the flood of college students who, each year, are suddenly sent forth into a parent-free, alcohol-packed environment, where they proceed to go nuts. Look at MIT, which is filled with kids who have ostensibly lived pure, chaste, alcohol-free teenage lives, focused solely on academics and after-school activities that improved their chances of acceptance at a prestigious school. Then freshman year hits, and -- woo-ha! -- the next thing you know, someone's in a coma or jumping off a roof.Groups such as MADD say the condomization of alcohol is working: they point to the dramatic drop in drunk-driving deaths among 16-to-20-year-olds. Hey, if fewer drunk kids are driving, that's a wonderful thing. But MADD'S own statistics show that teenage kids are drinking as much as ever, and to imagine that more laws will change that is the worst kind of
delusion.Alcohol is not the problem. The problem is that the more we demonize it, the more attractive it becomes, and the bigger the explosion when the cork finally does come out of the bottle. You can try to keep alcohol away from kids, but -- I mean, come on. That'll work about the same time they take the Mass Pike tollbooths down.
So let's hope that one day those righteous rulemakers stop trying to block out every single minute of their own teenage experience and shed the belief that abstinence -- from anything -- is a reasonable, attainable goal. Perhaps one day, the world will again smile on adults who help prepare the next generation of kids to meet the future with wisdom, maturity, and the knowledge that you absolutely do not, under any circumstance, mix milk, blackberry brandy, and tequila.
Kris Frieswick can be reached at krisf1@gte.net.
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