My whine about wine

I know that many of us have had experiences like this. It was a time of innocence.  Children today want to grow up too quickly, but we also did. Those of us who pushed authority to the limit in the sixties often ended up getting caught out. There was one time though that I didn’t get caught, or maybe I did, and it wasn’t acknowledged.

My parents weren’t  strict. I was allowed to go out with boys at quite a young age. On this occasion at the age of sixteen and going to Business College, I was chuffed that I had a boyfriend who was almost four years older than me. He was a University student. My parents didn’t worry that he was older because he was from a religious family.

So, in the middle of the week, we went to a University function. There was a band, and it was in some cellar in the middle of Sydney. We danced for a time, and even though it was the middle of winter, it was very hot in that closed environment. The only drink on offer was home-made red wine. We didn’t have alcohol in our house, so I’d never drunk before.  I didn’t like the taste of it, so I gulped it straight down. Now, I’m not too sure if I had a second glass or not, but I was a mess. I had trouble walking, so he had to carry me to the car. I do remember shouting abuse at some poor souls who were staring. I don’t remember the car trip home. The older boyfriend had to practically carry me to the front door. He found my keys in my bag and opened the door for me. I remember him saying for me to wake my sister (we shared a room) and get her to help me to bed. He handed back my keys, took off at an incredible pace, and I was on my own. Luckily the parents had long since gone to bed. 

Our house had a wide hallway. I remember stumbling from one wall to the next, the walls in the hall being the only thing to keep me upright. In the bedroom, my sister was fast asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her, or maybe I assumed I was in a better state than I was.  Maybe I thought she might dob on me. I started to get dressed into my nightwear. I kept falling off the bed and landing on my backside on the floor.  Then there was the dreaded knock on the bedroom door. My father demanded to know what the noise was. That was enough to temporarily sober me up. “Don’t come in Dad; I’m getting dressed!” I said. How my sister slept through I will never know.

Then once in bed, the room spun. I thought I was dying. I swore never to drink again. Sure! We all did that. I don’t know how many times I threw up, but I managed to make it to the bathroom each time.

Next morning I was still as drunk as a skunk. I told my mother I had a migraine and couldn’t go to college. She swallowed it. I had migraines from the time I was ten years old, and the only relief was sleep in a darkened room until they lifted. It took three days for this imagined migraine to come good.

Years later my brother came home in the same state. He told my mother that it must have been something he ate. She said ‘sure, I tried that on my own mother at your age, and she went up to the baker and got into him for selling me a pie that was off’.

I guess there is not much difference between generations. We all have to learn our own lessons.

Did you have a similar experience with alcohol in your youth?

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