A gentle reminder

Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.

~the Tao Te Ching

“Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.” ~W.C. Fields

“Too bad drinking scotch isn’t a paying job or Kenny’s dad would be a millionaire!” — Eric Cartman, Southpark

So we’re out drinking the other night. I can’t remember the last time we went out drinking. This, in and of itself, is one of the main rites of passage for me as an adult — this staying home watching Netflix and eating dinner from bags and drinking only juice or water. What happened to volleyball night on Tuesdays and dancing on Thursdays?

Not that I spent all my free time out drinking when I was younger, mind you.

Fine, so there was that six-month period my freshman year of college when we hung out in Tijuana. And that time right around my 21st birthday when the bartenders in Eureka, Calif., knew me by name. (Okay, not really.)

And that night with the coast guard guy when my friends left me to go dance and I was kicked out of the club for falling asleep on the table.

Bless you, Coast Guard Man, wherever you are. I still give Denise shit for leaving me with you. You were my only true friend that night. Thank you. By the way, did we kiss in the alley? My memory is still fuzzy on that.

But this post isn’t about Coast Guard Man (who was just a kid in all actuality, as was I). This is a post about Scotch.

“Scotchy. Scotch. Scotch,” as Will Farrell’s Anchorman character would say.

I didn’t meet Scotch until last year. True story. Vodka, Tequila, Hot Damn. Those I had met. But not Scotch.

Last year, Jon was given a bottle of Glenmorangie Scotch. Spelling the word as I type, I realize why I must love it so much. IT HAS MY NAME IN IT! How cool is that?!

So I drank it, and I liked it, but recently alcohol has not appealed to me the way it used to and the bottles in the cupboard have been sadly neglected, I’m afraid. I hope I haven’t hurt their feelings.

Last week when Denise called me to say that she was going to be horribly lonely over the weekend at flight school because her family couldn’t come down and she lives with a 21-year-old who makes the apartment smell like rotting flesh and hamburger helper, she asked me if I’d ever tried Scotch.

“Scotch?!” I replied greedily. “I LOVE Scotch!”

So Scotch and a 15-hour drive it was. We set out on a quest to see if it was truly true: that drinking scotch (even barrels and barrels of it) will not, under any circumstances, produce a hangover. As a bona fide lightweight, I have an understandable fear of hangovers.

What I didn’t realize until Saturday night, however, was that ladies (apparently) do not order glasses of Scotch. Eh, hem.

Who knew this? Where was I supposed to learn this? Didn’t Darrin Stephens on Betwitched drink glasses of Scotch? And it was drinking night, dammit. Perhaps the last of my youthful career. From here on out, it’s all Lola post Tony on Copacabana. So I silently vowed to myself to live this one to the fullest.

Denise ordered us $14 shots of Scotch. They sucked. It tasted like battery acid and Chloraseptic.

So we ordered another round of these piddly shot glasses, this time of Glenmorangie. Ahhhh. Smooth. Like buttah. We liked that a lot.

My last hurrah was a good one. I had a chance to be young again — get denied from a bar when I couldn’t find my license — dance with a beautiful girl named Angie who was probably half my age, and laugh until my sides hurt. I also know now that if I had to choose someone to sleep with (besides my husband), it would be Val Kilmer.

“The Doors Val Kilmer? Or Ice Man Val Kilmer?”

“The Saint Val Kilmer.”

Here’s lookin’ at you, Val. Oh, and if anyone is wondering what I’d like for Christmas, this is it. I wear a medium.

“For her fifth wedding, the bride wore black and carried a scotch and soda.” — Phyllis Batelle (American Journalist, b.1922)