Must We Say It Again?

Well, it’s here at last, folks. Spring break: one sweet, carefree, and altogether too short week of oversleeping, partying, beach cruising, and of course drinking. What’s that, you say? Drinking? That’s absurd! Teenagers don’t ever drink! Right. And I saw Elvis in Taco Bell last week. We all know teenagers drink. A good number of them fairly heavily. We also know that nothing anybody says or does is going to stop them; after all it’s "just having a good time."

So, now comes the part where I list all the reasons for you not to drink, right? Personally, I don’t care if you want to drink yourself sick. If you want to kill off all of your brain cells, that’s just one more high-level job opportunity that opened up for me. Besides, I need a good laugh every now and then, and few things are funnier than a brain dead drunken lunatic staggering around trying not to slip and fall in his own vomit. And boy let me tell you, the ladies just love to see that sort of thing in a man. And you’ve just got to love that wonderful aroma of alcohol on the breath. The cops certainly do.

Once again, I’ve got nothing against teens who drink. I’ve had friends who drink; quite a few of them in fact. Certainly never had anything against them. They used to tell me that a drink makes any bad day good, and any good day better. I also had a best friend who was killed by her drinking boyfriend in a car accident. Drinking certainly didn’t make her day any better. And it didn’t make her funeral any better when no one could tell her goodbye because her body was too shattered and mangled to be displayed. I’ve got nothing against people who drink, but I’m awfully certain she might.

I didn’t write this article at the request of adults. I didn’t write it to win anybody’s respect. I wrote it because he other day I heard a group of idiots discussing how they were going to get hammered and go cruising this spring break. I wrote it because I have some futile pension for lost causes. I know that no matter how many of these and other such articles any of you read, you won’t listen. You’ll keep on drinking, keep on "having a good time." So like I said, I’m not going to tell you not to drink. I know that’s pointless. But when you do decide to go out and get plastered, stay the hell away from me and anyone I care about. -Ben Loer