Drink Up.

Can you trust a decision made by a thirteen-year-old?

I remember being in grade seven and in the basement of a friend’s house at a birthday party. One of the girls who was there had brought a jug of Kool-Aid with a stealthily swiped add-in. I don’t remember what booze it was, but I remember the buzz around that basement by the idea that tonight was going to be different. Tonight we were drinking.

People drank straight from the jug. Back-wash, a perceived serious threat to our health on a regular day, not a concern that night. Anything to get to the sweet nectar that she promised was in there.

I have no clue what the alcohol to Kool-Aid ratio was. I remember multiple people talking about how they loved the taste, as if they could filter right through the cups of sugar and artificial cherry flavour. Amanda who brought the illicit liquid had multiple glugs and almost immediately was stumbling drunk. Most of us at the party, although new to alcohol ourselves, knew she was playing to the back row, if you know what I mean. She was selling the potency. It was weird that no one else showed the effects as extremely as she did throughout the evening.

But the jug was passed around and eventually got to me.

It seems unreal when I tell you, in that moment, in the carpeted basement with fake wood panelling, at thirteen years old, I made a decision from which I’ve never wavered.

I opted out. I remember having this little voice inside my head telling me that if I like the taste of it, it could be a problem.

Those friends opted out of me soon after as they realized it wasn’t a one time choice. In those formative, wannabe rebellious years, what good is a teetotaler in the crew?

Tonight, thirty plus years later, I sit in a dressing room of sweaty, slightly out-of-shape, yet happy warriors having won an overtime victory in the semi-finals of beer league hockey.

Byron heads to the middle of the room, opens the cooler, and starts tossing cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon around to each player. “The best part of victory,” one of them says as he cracks the can.

Byron skips me. He knows I don’t partake and so, something inside of me stays on the outside just like it did when I was thirteen.

It’s a funny thing about our choices. Why would a decision I made as an idiot kid stick when so many others didn’t? The mullet didn’t stick, but this did.

Sometimes our decisions become who we are. A defining feature. And maybe not even for others, but for ourselves.

Maybe we paint ourselves into corners and never know how long the paint takes to dry.

This is not to say I regret the choice I made in that basement all those years ago. It works for me. I get to hear people say, “Good for you,” like it’s some moral victory. Like I scaled the walls of a forbidden fortress. Or resisted Eve’s offer of the forbidden fruit.

I’ve saved a lot of money. Loads.

I don’t have stories of lost nights or vomit. Or nights of such drunken fun that laughter can’t contain the hijinks. All told, most would say I’ve lived a life in control. Though I take a quiet pride in having Peter, a friend who I have travelled with, say, “He’s the most fun sober guy.”

I don’t see it as a victory. Moral or otherwise. It’s just a part of the puzzle and I’m still looking for the other pieces.

So, instead of cracking the Pabst Blue Ribbon with my teammates, I open a can of Pepsi. Instead of imbibing in that jug of booze-laced Kool-Aid. I stick with the strong stuff, chocolate milk.

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In 2010, The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis landed in my lap. It was a book that was so funny, so intelligent, so Canadian, that I couldn’t contain myself. It instantly became a book I taught in Grade 10 English. I couldn’t rave enough about it.

It’s a blueprint for a book that has something to say (hope in politics, caring for our neighbour, etc.) while also making a reader genuinely laugh out loud. That’s a tough needle to thread. In some modest way, it encouraged me to keep honing my writerly voice.

Then I read Terry Fallis’ next book. And the next. And the next. I haven’t missed one. He continues to deliver pathos with humour.

When I found out he was teaching a class in Writing Humour at the University of Toronto, I signed up, drove to the heart of Toronto every week and tried to impress him with my own brand of heartfelt hilarity.

Anyway, this is all to say, a recent book recommendation I have is Terry Fallis’ latest novel The Marionette. It places James Norval, a thriller novelist, in the middle of a political coup d’etat in Mali. It’s got a solid plot that holds together Fallis’ greatest strength which is putting rich, real characters together in situations that call on their best. And of course, it’ll make you laugh.

You can also check out his Substack where he writes about being a writer.