One Burbon, One Scotch, One Beer, and Three Sippie Cups

This post contains 43% sarcasm by volume.

Trends in life, like the movies, tend to happen in groups. In 1981, we had three movies about werewolves with The Howling, American Werewolf in London, and Wolfen. This was nearly three decades before Jacob Black was a thought in the minds of tweeners. Then, in 1989, we had three underwater disaster movies; The Abyss, Deep Star Six and Leviathan. While The Abyss was clearly the better of the three films, you see that Hollywood tries to mimic itself in order to up the returns. The same thing happened with other disaster movies in the 90s. We had Deep Impact and Armageddon. There was Volcano and Dante’s Peak. There was The Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan, both featuring all star casts.

The same thing seems to happen in real life, especially this year. We’ve had multiple reports of air traffic controllers sleeping on the job and my personal favorite, neighborhood family friendly Americanized ethnic restaurants serving alcohol to kids.

Now, apart from Applebees being a more American based menu, the Olive Garden and Chili’s tend to lean towards Italian and Southwest Tex-Mex style cuisine, respectively. Yet, regardless of the menu, the servers seem to think that kids should be enjoying the over sized alcoholic drinks. If Chi-Chi’s was still around that would have been your ethnic food trifecta.

This is where I feel the need to take a stand. This is an outrage. Everyone needs to understand that giving alcohol to kids in restaurants is a serious offense. Giving alcohol to children begins in the home.

It starts on your daddy’s lap. I remember my dad giving me a sip of Budweiser while I was upon his knee at an early age. It was horrible. I think because of that experience, I never developed a taste for beer. Perhaps by exposing me at an early age, I was demystified by beer.  Maybe it was just that Budweiser tasted horrible.  I can't decide.

I tolerated it in college because it was cheaper than the whisky drink I would have preferred. My own child has had her share of sips from her pappy’s beer, Miller Light in this instance. But you see, today it’s OK for restaurants to ‘accidentally’ give alcohol to kids and get away with it.  If parents sue the restaurant for blatant mistakes, they are check chasers.  Yet, 40 years ago, you could be kicked out of establishments for giving your own kid a sip of your drink.

For once, I’m not talking about me. No, I wasn’t even a thought when my father got the family kicked out of Lum’s restaurant for giving my brother a sip of his beer. Just goes to show you how much things have changed and how more relaxed the drinking stigmas have gotten.

Soon, we’ll see a little league baseball team heading over to a T.G.I. Fridays for shots after they beat their division rivals at T-ball.

Drink up, kiddies.