My last Mifflin Block Party has got me feeling a bit down. Madison is a special place, a place where the wine flows from a plastic bag and the women come equipped with vodka-filled Nalgenes. In the ""real world,"" people don't engage in such an endless liver assault. Or do they?
I see hope in the form of blubbering-drunk ‘adults' all around us. My best role models are my parents. I'm fully confident my mom could take down Frank the Tank in a chug-off. My dad's quite fond of referring to his ‘mistress Stella' while enjoying a fine bottle of Stella Artois. So what if he can only handle two or three beers, he's up at 8 a.m. the next day to join me for a bike ride—I challenge you to be so active at 50.
Madison is full of middle-aged inebriation. My St. Patrick's Day was highlighted by a 30-something in a Don Bebe Packers jersey stumbling down the street with a box of Lucky Charms. I had a good St. Patty's Day, but vintage Don Bebe and Lucky Charms—I can't top that.
My most encouraging experience came last week, as I watched a 70-year-old man polish off four glasses of wine in little more than an hour. The wisdom of his years allowed him to cast off the rules of wine snobbery, fill each glass to the brim and just guzzle—all with a grin of satisfaction on his face befitting any 21-year-old excitedly slurping a fish bowl. And to his credit, he stayed sharp as a tack the entire night, save for a few made-up words.
So maybe it is the end of an era for me. But I'm going to look at it as the end of Fleischmann's and PBR. I've still got a good half-century of drunken enjoyment ahead of me.
