{"id":75,"date":"2007-02-16T10:14:31","date_gmt":"2007-02-16T16:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bendreth.com\/?p=75"},"modified":"2007-02-16T10:29:43","modified_gmt":"2007-02-16T16:29:43","slug":"i-ran-into-an-old-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/?p=75","title":{"rendered":"I ran into an old friend …"},"content":{"rendered":"

and former coworker the other day (actually, when Marion and I were leaving the restaurant where we had our Valentine’s Day dinner). He has a new business<\/a> that I’ll have to check out.<\/p>\n

Which reminds me of one night during senior year in high school, when I was sitting around at a friend’s house with a couple other guys, eating baklava his mother had made and playing a Japanese drinking game comprised of six small cups in different sizes, each with a different flower or other pattern, and a die with corresponding patterns on the faces. You’d roll the die, then drink the cup that matched the up face.<\/p>\n

We might have been playing cards, with the loser of the hand having to roll the die, but it’s too long ago for me to really remember. I also don’t remember what we were drinking. Probably sake; maybe ouzo. It’s not as though we were discriminating drinkers, anyway. Jax and Pearl were more commonly available to teenagers in our area. (Which, in turn, reminds me that I once got to see the two-headed calf and the diving horse act at the Pearl Brewery.)<\/p>\n

I don’t remember, but I probably walked or rode my bicycle to my friend’s house; my family only had one car, and I was rarely able to drive it on my own.<\/p>\n

Society was more relaxed about drinking in general back then. My parents’ generation held cocktail parties (I can remember lurking on the stairs as a young boy, watching when the neighbors came over and I was supposed to be in bed). Underage drinking seemed to cause fewer problems, also, although I’m sure that varied by community. You couldn’t buy<\/em> anything until you were 18 (which was also draft age, although voting age was 21), but there were no legal restraints back then preventing an adult from giving<\/em> you something to drink, and there was normally a “it’s just kids blowing off steam” reaction to it, as long as nobody was hurt. I had an English teacher in high school who provided drinks on occasion (not in school – you had to go over to her place). I also remember various “fermentation experiments” being run in the back of one of the physics classrooms.<\/p>\n

Funny what memories a chance encounter can bring back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

and former coworker the other day (actually, when Marion and I were leaving the restaurant where we had our Valentine’s Day dinner). He has a new business that I’ll have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-its-all-about-me"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}