RETURN TO THUMBNAILS | |
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(138) GOINES: 21-YEARS OF WORK:
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Nowadays, you can do just about anything before you've attained your majority except buy a drink. You can vote, own property, get married without your parents' consent. But no liquor. "Free, white and twenty-one," was the saying, repeated to the point of tedium on that celebratory day. If you were free, white and twenty-one, that is. You don't hear it much anymore. I was taken out for a drink by friends when I turned 21, and I pass the tradition on as the occasion demands. As we bend the elbow, as the grown-up liquid whistles down our throats, in a fiercely symbolic way we change from boy to man; from girl to woman. Flashing gold teeth, the piano player smoothly segues into "Happy Birthday." Everything just so, it rubricates a memory on your internal calendar. Something to be brought out and treasured from time to time, generally when a junior rounds that same old legal bend. It can only happen once, and never again, and it happens right on schedule, no matter what else may be going on. |