I’ve done it; I’ve hit the big two-one. I can now legally do everything (well, except rent a car, I can't do that until I’m 25). And I’ve been asked a million questions about it:
Where are you going on your birthday?
Are you going to get drunk?
How many bars are you going to hit?
Will you have more than one drink?
You know you should be careful; you don’t have experience with alcohol. Who knows what it could do to you!
You could be a lightweight. You should watch out.
I have heard these and countless others over the past couple months, maybe even the past couple years! Don’t get me wrong, I am excited to be able to order alcohol and drink it with my meals. That is what I’m looking forward to, but maybe not in the ways you might think. I don’t want to “get trashed” all the time or drink to forget, as some people say. I’m excited for a different reason; a social one. I’m excited to order a glass of wine with a meal when I go out to dinner with my parents. I’m excited to have a casual drink with dinner when I’m at home. I’m excited to go out and have drinks with work friends. These are the things I’m excited about.
Let me put this out there as a disclaimer — will I ever get drunk? I’m sure it will happen at some point. But my goal of a night out drinking with friends is never going to be to get drunk and forget everything. That’s not comfortable for me. Now if this is you, awesome. You do you. But I don’t want that. I don’t want to wake up the next day and wonder how I got in my bed the night before — or really, anything I did before that. That doesn’t sound fun to me.
But I will say that I am excited to able to order a glass of wine when I have dinner out with friends or family. I can’t wait to go out with work friends and relax with a bottle between us. Drinking is a social tool for me, and I am so excited to use it in that way. There have been many times when a group of people or friends, work friends included, go out to get a drink and I can’t join them.
Adulthood is right around the corner. In fact, it’s already here. I've technically been an adult since age 18. But you never really consider yourself an adult until you turn about 21. You now have all these responsibilities that you never really thought about before. Well, turning 21 is just another step into this new life. Why not just jump in headfirst?
