Alcohol is bad. Right? But lots of things are bad. Sugar is bad. Gossip is bad. Those things in shampoo — sulfates! Sulfates are bad. Everything is bad if you really stop and think about it.
Cigarettes are back, apparently. But alcohol, which was never that bad, has suddenly fallen out of fashion. Which is annoying. Because now you go places and people are just not drinking, and it makes it seem like not drinking is easy. But it’s not. Not drinking is really, really hard.
I’m happy for these young people that they’ll never accidentally break and enter, pass out on a doorstep, or wake up next to a stranger.
I’m really happy for them. They have their vapes and their gummies. Some might call those bad. Others might call them good. But regardless, they have their thing. They can probably have “just one drink” and “enjoy the taste.” Super happy for them.
But I wonder what their young lives are without it. I can’t even imagine it.
I feel bad that they’ll never experience the feeling of the clock ticking to 5:00. The feeling of that first cold sip. How will they know the workday is over, even if they keep working and drinking for another five to eight hours?
I feel bad that they’ll never be the life of the party. That no one will ever look at them halfway through the night and say “I like this Morgan!” Obviously they wouldn’t say Morgan; they would say their name, because this is not about me.
I feel bad about the bed bugs. That they’ll never know how you can worry about them for twelve hours straight and then have one drink and suddenly not care about bed bugs at all. Oddly.
It looks so easy now. But it’s not easy.
Is it bad? It’s bad, right?
Thank you, John DeVore, whose title I stole, then changed, but whose article I didn’t read until I finished mine. He wrote something beautiful about memory and longing. I am still thinking about bed bugs. Read his article here.
Leave a Reply