It has been a while since I’ve written, so I apologize in advance for my absence.

A friend of mine from work is getting married in July and, while he and his fiancée will have a nice church wedding, he’s having trouble finding a place for the reception… because many places around here do not allow alcohol, and those that do have already been booked far in advance. Such is the difficulty with a July wedding in this part of Appalachia.

This got me thinking though, of how alcohol has influenced my life. These days, I drink so very little that I don’t even remember the last time I had any sort of alcohol. When Sheila and I got married, I had half a glass of champagne and that was it… and that was almost 8 years ago now. But there was a time when I drank to excess.

1972 – The government of Ontario lowered the drinking age from 21 to 18 – the very year I turned 18, and the same year my brother turned 21! He was pretty pissed at this turn of events, but I didn’t much notice or care. As an aside, by the end of the 1970s, the drinking age was raised to 19 where it still is today. A few years later when I was working part-time at Mother’s Pizza while attending the Faculty of Education, we used to get a lot of business from students at Wayne State University in Detroit where the drinking age was still 21. They liked both that their money had greater buying power in Canada, and that they could legally drink two years ahead of the rest of the US. They usually left very generous tips.

1973 – Just before heading off to the University of Windsor, I took a summer job working at Nalaco – the North American Life Assurance Company in downtown Toronto. I was in the typing pool… in fact, I was the only man in the typing pool. My mother had told me, back when I was in grade 9, that typing skills would serve me well, and she was right. I was (and still am) an excellent typist and could maintain a sustained speed of over 75 words per minute with no mistakes. At one point, I entered a typing contest but, at 81 wpm, I didn’t even get past the first cut of 100 wpm. After several rounds, the winner – at 157 wpm – walked away with the $10,000 prize.

This was also the same year that my parents decided to buy a house and get away from apartment living which they had done for as long as we had lived in Toronto. They took possession of the house in mid-August, the same day in fact, that my job at Nalaco ended. I left for work that morning from our high rise apartment, and would go home to a new house. Since my job was ending that day, some of my coworkers took me out after work to a small pub down the road from the office. It was here that I first learned a new word… “zombie". Apparently, it’s a mixture of 3 different types of rum with some other stuff thrown in for good measure. I quickly developed a strong fondness for rum and, after 3 or 4 of these zombies, I began to act like one.

After a few hours, I had difficulty standing up and, with whatever wits were left me, I decided to leave and go home. My friends wished me well and out the door I went. I managed to get on a streetcar which took me to the Eglinton subway station where I transferred to the Leslie bus that would take me within a mile or so of the new house. I would have to walk the rest of the way. In my drunken haze, I realized that I’d have to call my dad at some point because I didn’t yet have a key to the new house. I think it was riding the bus that finally did me in. The streetcar was reasonably smooth since it rode on rails like a train, but the bus hit every bump and hole in the city streets as it made its way east then north. As it turned north onto Leslie Street, I could hold my stomach no longer and I bolted off the bus as it stopped to let off some other passengers – right in front of the Inn on the Park hotel.

Now, the Inn on the Park was one of the swankiest hotels in midtown Toronto and I can only say in my defense that I’ve always had good taste! It was after 11:00 pm so it was fairly dark, and I managed to find a secluded spot where I wouldn’t been seen from the road. I threw up several times into one of their nice flower beds. What a mess I was… and what a mess I made! After about a half hour I managed to stand and, with only about 75¢ to my name (having spent the rest at the pub) I decided to walk north and call my dad from the first pay phone I found.

I’m not sure how I managed, but I eventually walked up to Lawrence Avenue about a mile or so farther north. There was a pay phone on the corner and I called my dad to come and get me. I then passed out. A short while later, I felt my dad shaking me and calling to me to wake up. It was 1:30 in the morning, and dad said he had found me sprawled out on the sidewalk, reeking of alcohol. He managed to shuffle me into the car and he took me home. He took off my shoes and let me fall onto my bed where I spent the rest of the night and most of the next morning.

Now… it’s said that a hangover is something which can only be experienced, and not accurately described. Well, whoever said that was bang on accurate. When I woke up, I was so completely miserable that I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been the night before. When I next saw him, my dad could only shake his head and smile. For all my protestations about my dad’s imperfections, I guess I had a few of my own.

The sad thing though, is that I didn’t really learn a lesson from my first experience as a drunk.