Here’s how a recent vacation started out for me: we hadn’t been on the road for five minutes before Clementine’s aggrieved voice floated up from the backseat.
“Are you going to get drunk on this trip?”
Now, historically, my first instinct has always been to reply to a question of that nature with some kind of wisecrack like: “Am I going to get drunk? Honey, you’d be better off asking me if I ever plan on getting sober.” However, my decade plus relationship with Clementine has taught me that it’s best not to get involved in these do-you-still-beat-your-wife type questions. So, as much as I was dying to find out which after school special that question had come from–as well as defend my (relatively good) record of sobriety–I knew that traveling down that path was a one-way ticket to the land of drama. And so instead I kept silent and tried to remember the last time I had really been drunk.
Certainly I had gotten drunk before Clementine had come along; my bachelorette party stands out in particular, for no other reason than, embarrassingly enough, it is all captured on videotape. But Clementine couldn’t be thinking about that; after all, in a decidedly old-fashioned twist, she was born nearly a year after the wedding. And I know that I was drunk several times while on my honeymoon in Thailand–since the beach bars we frequented would only sell whisky by the bottle, it was actually fairly amazing that I have any recollection of Thailand at all. But again, Clementine wasn’t with us on our honeymoon (except, in a very small way, at the very end–that Thai whisky is potent stuff), so I was sure that she wasn’t thinking about those times either.
Really, the more I thought about it, the more sure I was that I had never been really drunk since she came along. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not because I have any moral superiority here, it’s just that “children” and “hangover” add up to one of the worst combinations ever–worse even than “discount” and “sushi”–although, in the end, the results from both are the same.
And so it was that–relatively secure in my own innocence–I continued to ponder Clementine’s question as we drove down the road. Perhaps it had just been idle curiosity: you know, “Are you going to wear your bathing suit? Are you going to get a tattoo? Are you going to get drunk on this trip?” Maybe. The whole thing, however, reeked of chastisement, something that has never sat well with me–even in the best of times–and sits even less better now that we are in the preteen years. After all, it’s pretty hard to take a lecture on drunkenness from someone who will probably one day (hopefully, not until her college years) experience the exquisitely painful humiliation of a Zima hangover.
In fact, it’s hard to get lectured on anything from someone who would put a carton of ice cream under a bed and then be surprised and indignant when you’re upset about the ensuing mess. But that, unfortunately, is life in the preteen lane. I get lectures on “going green” from someone who has never, at any point in their life, turned off a light upon leaving a room, and who thinks of the refrigerator as an ad hoc air conditioner.
Not only that, but I get driving lessons from someone who thinks that using the stick shift while driving a car with manual transmission is some sort of an affectation (“Do you have to grab that thing all the time?”), and nutrition counseling from someone who has already consumed their own weight in ramen noodles–twice.
Come to think of it, maybe I will be getting drunk on our next trip after all.