When James was 16, seven years ago, I took him to Toronto with me to visit my Mom. After our visit, he spent a week with my friend Ellie and her three kids. The idea was that the kids would show James around Toronto and they would all have a good time.
James had met Ellie’s daughter, Jay, a year earlier and had fallen madly and passionately in love! Every time he talked about her over the next year, his voice would soften and change!
After a day in Toronto, Jay told James that she had a boyfriend and while he was very nice, he lived far away and she wasn’t interested.
James was devastated! He told Jay’s older brother, Norm, about Jay turning him down and said he would like to get drunk. Norm was more than willing to help. He told James that they had a well supplied supply of liquor so they both headed there.
Ellie was upstairs doing whatever so the first she knew about their plan was when they crawled up the stairs to Norm’s room. They were incapable of walking up the stairs and she knew they would feel very sorry in the morning so she sent them off to bed to sleep it off.
She went downstairs to get dinner ready. A short time later, she heard a terrible bang, crash, smash sound so she rushed outside to see what had happened. What she found was Norm lying on the concrete patio. He had fallen out of his window, landed on the roof of the porch, hit the fence then landed on the patio. She called Emergency and they arrived shortly thereafter. They checked out Norm and decided to take him to the hospital.
They asked Ellie if she thought that it was possible that James might have pushed Norm out of the window. When the EMS checked James, they realized he was so drunk that he wasn’t able to push a finger on the floor, let alone a 180 lb friend out a window. Both of them had blood alcohol levels far higher than they ever should be – they were more than just legally drunk but somewhere below dead.
Norm ended up in the hospital for a few days and had his stomach pumped. James ended up being a very sick puppy for a few days. After seeing Norm and suffering a really bad hangover, James vowed to never get that drunk ever again.
Anyway, to make a very long story shorter, at Halloween, James went to a friend’s party/get together. It was a BYOB party so he had taken something with him. When I asked how the party was, he said he felt old – I laughed because he is only 23 but he said most of the people there were only 18 or 19.
He says that some of the 17 year olds wanted to get some liquor from him. Unless they could prove that they were over 18, he refused - basically he was carding them! He said he was not willing to contribute to the delinquency of minors.
I had brought some cigarillos back from Cuba in April. James took some of those with him as well. He refused to give any cigarillos to the underagers. He said he has learned that smoking is a bad habit and he didn’t want to contribute to that either. Apparently he gave them lectures about not getting into bad habits at their age!
It has taken a long time for the lessons of 7 years ago to sink in but apparently there is hope.
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