High School High
Where I’m from
Alcohol is a big part of youth culture in the Etats, but it is so profoundly repressed and fucked up that it almost makes me wish I grew up here. In Ohio we used to spend like 4 hours finageling booze via fake ID or Chris’ brother and all of 4 minutes consuming it in someone’s basement or garage. Then you try to walk a straight line into the football game, past the PTA and the cops lining the fence. The drinking age is so stupid and restrictive that I had no idea what responsible drinking was until I left. I can actually have a beer with dinner and digest my food? Who knew. American kids grow up with no social or cultural context for alcohol. We just end up binge drinking and lying and wrapped around telephone poles. And binge drinking sucks. Natural Light is a foul and hideous brew and no one should have six of them in a row. However, it’s not like you can go to a restaurant and get buzzed with friends. That is, until you’ve left the suburbs and served three tours in Iraq. Then you’re old enough to order a fucking Amstel Light. In contrast, I went to a high school party this weekend and the kid passing the bowl was there with his mom. And that’s how it should be.
I went to see the parents, but I think I was actually closer to the ‘kids’ age. They’re all wearing white trainers and jeans like me, except I took my shoes off at the door. I’m wearing Amma’s socks and I feel a little uncool. The socks are covered in grey checks and little white geckos. Talk to Ashton Kutcher and his maternal date for a while. The International School kids are so much cooler than I ever was. The brown kids I knew in school had thick glasses and smelled funny. The bar is a little higher here.
As an observer, however, this is so much better than the parties I went to in high school. For one thing there’s food, and the house is clean. In the burbs the only prerequisite is that the house is empty. You might be able to steal some Pizza Pockets from the freezer before the drunken host yells at you, but that’s about it. Here there’s an open bar with, like, bartenders. In high school what I drank was, in order,
1. Kamkatcha Vodka – also sold as paint thinner
2. Natural Light – tastes like water after two cans
3. Absolut Vodka – cause the ads are good
4. Pabst Blue Ribbon – what people with food stamps buy
5. Bud Light – if you’re feeling classy
The only mixed drink you can make in an empty house is a Screwdriver. It is an acidic puke tickler and to this day I cannot stomach orange juice. In SL, howevs, you can get a scotch and soda or something civilized. Beyond the booze, though, what I most appreciate is that young people don’t get treated like idiots here. Half of the people I know online end up being teenagers and the average age of the iTimes writers is -7. They (I?) often do better work than most of the older people I know, and they’re about as worldly-wise as you can get.
What I found most repulsive about being young in the states was that it was fully OK to discriminate and treat me like a second class citizen. I still have to fill out my fucking draft card to get college loans and I still have to bus these tables all night, but I can’t go out with the staff after work. I couldn’t even sit in the bar across the street cause it was illegal. It’s just insulting and petty.
The Sri Lankan government, by virtue of incompetence, treats its young people pretty much the same as everybody else. I’m not even clear what the real drinking age is. And the culture is also different. Your uncles start offering you booze as soon as you can see above the liquor cabinet. Not cause they’re delinquent, but cause they understand that you’re not retarded. I think this is so much better than a culture that acts like kids are going to be sober virgins till they’re 21. In America it’s the drunk leading the drunk without an adult role model in site. The closest thing I got to advice was ‘chug, chug, chug’.
I started off not really liking General Sarath Fonseka, him being part of the aggressive war effort. I didn’t support the war (largely cause I thought it would fail), and I thought Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Fonseka were gleefully stomping everything. Fonseka even came out and said “I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people,” in 2008 (
General Sarath Fonseka was arrested on a bunch of trumped up charges, but mainly for daring to threaten Mahinda in a Presidential election. Despite his poor health, Fonseka was arrested in February 2010 and sentence to three years. Word on the street now, however, is that he’ll be released soon. Like any day now. President Mahinda Rajapaksa has told 
I’ve been testing a lot of apps. A very interesting one is iPlayboy, from Playboy magazine. It’s bad porn but a good magazine, especially since you can read issues from its cultural heyday – the Mad Men era of the 60s.
I’m going to get back to blogging. I buy a shitload of stuff on my iPad. Not that I like spending money, and the exchange rate terrifies me, but it’s just so easy, and so good. For example, I’ve been reading comics again. Spiderman, and 
Sounds like your very bitter…I do agree somewhat to your statement…but it’s also your background and your surroundings that influence you. Don’t blame Ohio…blame yourself for hanging around more civilized people. It all depends on where your lived, which school you went to (like SL) and also your parents. The closest advice was “chug chug chug”? Where were your parents? You should be old enough to handle yourself first of all. Just because someone tells you to jump, doesn’t mean you have to.
I don’t know where in Ohio you lived but it seems to me like you picked a pretty bad area.
Your statement “In America it’s the drunk leading the drunk without an adult role model in site”. That’s such a negative statement to make about a country where you went to get an education or whatever. My guess is that your a loser who went out constantly and getting yourself drunk under no ones obligations….did anyone put a gun to your head to drink? You know you could have stopped yourself anytime you wanted to…I mean you do have a brain of your own right?
You were treated like a second class citizen because you probably acted like one…I have lived in the States all my life…and have no complaints.
Mybe it’s because I wasn’t out drinking everyday with a bunch of loser’s…but that’s just me.
Don’t blame Ohio…blame yourself for hanging around uncivilized people…sorry..
i don’t think you grasped what indi was trying to bring across. firstly, the idea of restriction; it is well-believed that restrictions, especially those with age caveats, tend to promote violation. it has little to do with where and how someone goes about the action of consuming alcohol, the mere fact that a good portion of high school students in america, notwithstanding gender and social/economic status, are told that alcohol is not for them means they will be convinced to try it, and oh my goodness!! even enjoy it. yes, some people consider drinking a stupid thing, such as yourself sammy, others consider it a potentially relaxing activity, however we are to allow all the right to follow their decisions. would you call winston churchill uncivilized, or how about ted kennedy, or wait a second, just about every “civilized” american whose quick enough to offer you a fine single malt or a tasty bourbon, or maybe those hip yuppie types who love to down pricey bottles of wine.
the point is, it has little to do with indi being a loser, or uncivilized people whatever that means, or indi’s parents being irresponsible, it has to do with the psychological reality of structured, restrictive laws. secondly, the idea of judgement; you, sammy, have taken the leap from fact-finding narrative to downright pre-judgement. do you believe that only low-class, poor high school students fall prey to the influence of alcoholic consumption? i know first hand that an assumption of that sort is flat-out wrong. are parents responsible for student binge-drinking? the easy assumption is to think yes, poor parenting.
my experience proves otherwise: parents who allow their 16 year-old children to have a glass of wine with dinner end up having more responsibly conscious drinkers as children. rather than teaching someone to drive a car, and then asking that same person 3 years later to learn to drink responsibly makes you wonder why people have such a tough time preventing drunk driving among teens. why don’t we teach people at a younger age to drink responsibly, so that when they achieve driving status they no longer think it’s fun to drive drunk, or know their personal limits much better. i do blame ohio, and the united states for overlooking the obvious facts that since increasing drinking ages, incidents of teen drinking has increased. i also blame them for disregarding the massive disparity between american drunk driving and european drunk driving, where teens are allowed to drink at 16, however drive at 18 and sometimes 21.
treating high school teens as second-class citizens is an impetus to make them want to act “uncivilized”, assuming they have little to offer society. and by the way, believing that someone can act like a second class citizen is like telling a white american that they’re acting like an ethnic immigrant, or maybe why a heterosexual is behaving gay or lesbian, or how about asking a methodist why they’re acting jewish? because the last time i checked, all these groups of people have been and/or are presently treated by the average american as second class citizens (note: inner city ghettos, ban on same-sex marriage, exclusive non-jewish social clubs, typical ethnicity of menial workers, etc, etc.). actually, people like yourself are treated fairly because you and the rest of the christian right sit on your moral high ground, dictating recycled jargon regarding the rights and wrongs of being human beings to the unsaved masses. sorry if i don’t see eye to eye with you sammy, maybe it’s because indi and i have been staying up late at night with a bunch of losers drinking natty lights until we can’t see…actually, no, we were up late drinking, playing cards with the future leaders of the world.
Sammy…
that was the most extraordinary reply i have ever read… you missed the whole point. and yes i lived in the states and hung out with some very “classy” people.. I am so gald I have left, because the thought of having to bump into, deal, socialise, or just rub shoulders with people of your train of thought gives me the hee bee gee bees.
I believe kids should only be allowed to drink when they’re responsible enough. Although the legal drinking age in the U.S. is pretty ridiculous, since kids can buy cigarettes at the age of 18, they should also be able to drink at that age. I like Europe’s policy on drinking because it’s more realistic. I agree that where a kid lives, the socio-economic status of the kid’s family, and the level of parental involvement does play a part, it doesn’t indicate whether the kid is going to have a drinking problem. Socio-economic status especially doesn’t matter, I’ve seen rich kids get drunk and poor kids get drunk.
I can personally tell you though that the best way to get young kids not to drink is to allow them to have a very small amount of wine or beer in the presence of a parent or adult relative. If a kid knows what alcohol tastes like they will be less likely to become alcoholics when they grow up. When you tell a kid that he/she can’t have a sip of the beer that you’re drinking and you tell the kid not to drink until he/she is 21 then naturally the kid is going to try to drink at every chance he/she gets, whether at a friend’s house or at a party. When my sisters and I were very small our parents always let us have a taste of whatever they were drinking if we asked for it and they never told us not to drink, but to do it responsibly and only under the supervision of an adult. Once we turned 21 we already knew how to drink within reason. As kids our parents had strict rules that we couldn’t go to parties or have parties without a parent or other adult to supervise things. That’s how I think things should be.