30, Not 20, Something

I think I might just start laying out my driver's license every time I buy beer.

I'm 33 years old. I figure that most people have to think I'm at least 21. That the days of me trying to hustle my way through a grocery store checkout line with a case of Miller Lite and hoping I don't get carded are over.

Especially when I've got a collection of Spider-Man fruit snacks, SpongeBob cheese crackers and Darth Vader lava explosion Pop Tarts following the beer.

Or I suppose I would have bought that when I was 19, too.

But, no.

I get carded, I would say, more than half the time I buy beer.

And that's OK. Not because it makes me feel young. You are how old you are no matter what other people think about you. Nothing changes the predictable and unyielding reality of simple mathematics and deductive logic.

I sympathize with the fear of being a guy with a job being busted by some underage informant. The dose of fuctitude you must feel when it happens.

Kind of like when I got arrested at age 17 for having one beer at a St. Patrick's Day festival and was only about five feet away from a trash can to throw away the foam at the bottom. In truth, I didn't really care much for beer at the time. I hadn't planned on drinking another one. But I wound up drinking heavily later that night because I was so depressed that I got arrested.

And, do you know that they sent me on a prison tour with rapists and murderers as escorts who smashed chairs above our heads and patted me on the butt and told me they hoped I would make it in because they'd like to have some "white ass?" And that they showed me the room with the dangling light bulb where everybody gets fucked in the ass? And that I had to shred documents for the American Red Cross to prove I cared about my community?

I've got nothing to hide, obviously. I'm more than a decade past legal drinking age.

But let me tell you ... when that case of beer goes across the conveyor belt, I can't help but think a pair of eyes are burning a hole right through me.

It never fails. I always feel like I'm committing a crime. Always.

Maybe it has something to do with an experience my wife and I had at a Harris Teeter grocery store when we were dating in college. I had just turned 23 a few days before. My wife was 21. We wanted to buy some Woodchuck cider and the lady behind the counter asked for my I.D.

I told her I didn't have it, but maybe I could show her my student I.D. She would have none of it. My wife showed the woman her I.D., but the woman said that she couldn't sell it to her because maybe she was just trying to buy it for me. Which, really, I don't think is really any of her business.

I went out to my car and found my license in the trunk. I brought it in. The woman called the manager over, who studied it intensely, looking at it, then at me, then back it, then back at me. I told him, "23."

He looked at me, like a cop would if he were trying to intimidate you, and said, "I'm just doing my job." He stared at me until I acknowledged that he thought he was just doing his job. I remember deciding that, rather than walk out because they were rude to me, I was going to make them sell me the alcoholic beverage. Which, ultimately, they were forced to do. I've never returned to Harris Teeter. I also wasn't saavy enough at the time to complain to upper management.

In any case, it's not like I'm totally off-base with this. After all, I'm being examined for potential criminal activity. That's just the truth of it.

So, I'm done with it. I'm just going to lay out my I.D. no matter what. You know, get that feeling when you witness an accident and you're all cooperative with a cop and everything.

And you know what will happen next?

Some kid's going to say, "Oh, sir, you don't really think you have to do that, right? I mean, you most definitely look waaaaay older than 21."

To which I'll say, "Look, I've been on the inside, man. They pound you in the ass in state prison. With this single light bulb dangling from the ceiling and everything. And I don't want you to have to go there. But if you want to make it easy on me, I appreciate that, too."

And I imagine he'll just think I'm a psycho.

Which isn't the worst, I suppose.