God I hate birthdays.

Both my parents died when I was young, and my various guardians were uninterested in such childish things as birthdays.  Thus, the first birthday I have any real recollection of was my twenty-first.

The guys took me out for a beer, my first legal alcoholic drink. I really wasn’t looking forward to it because I never took to alcohol a whole lot anyway.  Nevertheless, I nursed the beer until my “friends” began to get irritated with me and started chiding me with, “Chugalug it.  Chugalug it. Chugalug it.”

And so, fool that I was, I did it.  All 12 ounces went down like a shot — and then all 12 ounces came right back up in a horizontal, six-foot-long projectile laced with bile and several implanted hors d’œuvres which spattered over most of my very surprised associates. That was when I discovered that I was allergic to beer, and most other alcoholic beverages.  I knew there was a reason that I had shied away from booze most of my teens and now I had irrefutable proof.

That was 57 years ago. And surprise, surprise; none of those friends have ever again asked me to chugalug anything, not even a glass of milk.

And whenever a birthday rolls around, I hide in a closet.

Lloyd Rain