Tomorrow is my birthday. Usually, Sept. 10 is a day I look forward to; calls from family and friends, cards, presents and parties-all that good stuff. This year, however, I'm avoiding my birthday like a 40-year-old.
While I appreciate the fact that I have been alive and rockin' for 20 great years, this birthday is a lot like winning the popular vote but losing the electoral vote in a presidential election: close, but no cigar. Or in my case, no Jack and Coke.
Turning 20 strikes me as odd, though, for I can get married, pay taxes, own property (except in Missouri) and die for my country, yet I cannot legally enjoy a whiskey sour with a cute 15-year-old at the KK on a Thursday night.
While I agree that we should keep booze out of the high schools, having the legal drinking age set at anything above 19 is ridiculous. Damn federal highway funding; I'll spit on every recently constructed interstate until the young adults of America can come out of hiding from the basements and campsites across this great land and chug a beer or eight with pride.
Some of you may be thinking, \Come on, Pete, you attend the UW-Madison, the place where beer flows like wine and unlimited Long Island iced teas are included with every tuition bill!"" While I whole-heartedly concur with that notion, it still bothers me that those students who fall between the ""dark"" ages of 18 and 21 have to cloak-and-dagger it every time they want to go out and have a good time.
University officials, most notably PACE (Policy, Alternatives, Community, and Education Coalition), have been working steadily to terminate UW-Madison's status as a party school. Not only are they the ones who condemn house parties and drink specials, they are also the scoundrels responsible for the removal of ""Jump Around"" from the football game.
As you well know, the Princeton Review placed UW-Madison fairly high on its list of party schools. Pejorative to the administration's hard work, yes, but our rankings in beer, hard alcohol and partying are not altogether untrue.
I've wondered why the suits who run this place are so opposed to Badgers having a good time. I mean hell, we kick ass at academics, our sports teams are nigh unstoppable and so much money gets pumped into this place by alumni and corporations it'd make your beer bong jump for joy.
Maybe they think such notoriety is an embarrassment to the tradition of the school, and a deterrent to potential future students. Yet somehow I think that the hundreds of thousands of people who've come into UW-Madison as neophyte freshmen and came out as intelligent, prosperous members of society would credit the wild weekends just as much as the rigorous workloads as the true secret to their success.
So next time one of your hippie activist friends asks you to go out and protest Bush or some other trite cause, hand back the picket sign and say, ""No, man. The real enemies are the laws that afflict us right here at home. Help the homeless. Feed the hungry. Quench the thirsty."" Meanwhile, I'll be celebrating two decades of having the funniest given birth name ever with a Diet Coke and a slice of cheesecake.
Not.
