Not long ago, Betty Boop and I were sitting on the sofa. I was having a particularly rough time at work, doing my best to adjust to the new position and generally stressing out about it far more than was actually necessary. You know how that goes.
Knowing that I was going to be really tired and in need of a pleasant evening in – and in anticipation of an evening spent catching up on DVRed TV goodness – I stopped off at the local low-budget wine shop and stocked up on a couple bottles of one of my favorite vins, a Rodney Strong merlot circa 2002.
The great danger with someone of my ilk – with my family history – is that overdoing it with alcohol is way too easy.
You see, I'm a bit of a lightweight to begin with. I don't drink that much or that often, owing to an abstemiousness instilled by my parents, one of whom, at least, was the child of... well, "non-abstemious people" is probably the most polite way I can put it.
So I'm not so good at drinking. I tend to treat every beverage placed in front of me with democratic even-handedness. That is to say, I'll treat a glass of wine with the same rampant and gluttonous imbibing glee as I will a glass of soda.
It's all quaffed, is what I'm saying.
This isn't a problem when I'm having a single glass, or even a second. But at some point, when any self-aware (read: wary) person would say, "Gee, that was great, I've had enough," I – he of the booze-swilling, no-shut-off-valve Irish heritage – will say, "That was freakin' delightful! Let's have more!"
The point here is that my evening, which had begun with the intention of enjoying a little backed-up DVR goodness and a nice glass of wine, turned into a long bullshit session with Betty Boop in which the entire bottle of wine was consumed, most of it by me.
Not really a big deal, since I still got to bed at a reasonable hour, and remembered to drink a glass of water and swallow some aspirin to stave off any hangover (which, by the way, never materialized... really good red wine won't give you a headache. Learn the lesson).
But being in my cups for most of the evening suddenly opened my conduit to the wisdom of the universe, and I made a startling discovery. As the ancient Buddhist master said, "A fool who persists in his folly will eventually become wise."
I turned to Betty Boop at one point and said, "Do you know the real problem with living in New York?"
"No," said Betty Boop, "do tell."
"Every once in a while, you'll be idly skipping through life and you'll randomly turn and look, and right next to you will be the most disspiritingly perfect and beautiful person you've ever seen; a person whose unaffected, non-chalant beauty just overwhelms you and makes you feel small, no matter how much you usually think of yourself as a fairly attractive person."
"Yeah," Ms. Boop says. "True. What of it?"
"In New York," I said, "that happens every seven minutes."
Knowing that I was going to be really tired and in need of a pleasant evening in – and in anticipation of an evening spent catching up on DVRed TV goodness – I stopped off at the local low-budget wine shop and stocked up on a couple bottles of one of my favorite vins, a Rodney Strong merlot circa 2002.
The great danger with someone of my ilk – with my family history – is that overdoing it with alcohol is way too easy.
You see, I'm a bit of a lightweight to begin with. I don't drink that much or that often, owing to an abstemiousness instilled by my parents, one of whom, at least, was the child of... well, "non-abstemious people" is probably the most polite way I can put it.
So I'm not so good at drinking. I tend to treat every beverage placed in front of me with democratic even-handedness. That is to say, I'll treat a glass of wine with the same rampant and gluttonous imbibing glee as I will a glass of soda.
It's all quaffed, is what I'm saying.
This isn't a problem when I'm having a single glass, or even a second. But at some point, when any self-aware (read: wary) person would say, "Gee, that was great, I've had enough," I – he of the booze-swilling, no-shut-off-valve Irish heritage – will say, "That was freakin' delightful! Let's have more!"
The point here is that my evening, which had begun with the intention of enjoying a little backed-up DVR goodness and a nice glass of wine, turned into a long bullshit session with Betty Boop in which the entire bottle of wine was consumed, most of it by me.
Not really a big deal, since I still got to bed at a reasonable hour, and remembered to drink a glass of water and swallow some aspirin to stave off any hangover (which, by the way, never materialized... really good red wine won't give you a headache. Learn the lesson).
But being in my cups for most of the evening suddenly opened my conduit to the wisdom of the universe, and I made a startling discovery. As the ancient Buddhist master said, "A fool who persists in his folly will eventually become wise."
I turned to Betty Boop at one point and said, "Do you know the real problem with living in New York?"
"No," said Betty Boop, "do tell."
"Every once in a while, you'll be idly skipping through life and you'll randomly turn and look, and right next to you will be the most disspiritingly perfect and beautiful person you've ever seen; a person whose unaffected, non-chalant beauty just overwhelms you and makes you feel small, no matter how much you usually think of yourself as a fairly attractive person."
"Yeah," Ms. Boop says. "True. What of it?"
"In New York," I said, "that happens every seven minutes."
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