kahlua milkshakes and bunny noses

Tuesday, jul. 30, 2002   |   0 comments

I was in England when I turned 21 (this was months after the whole adult chicken pox debacle, but I still had pink marks all over my face where the 67 scabs had been before they rubbed free), and my mom sent me this enormous gift package full of all sorts of USA comfort food (pudding), as well as an assortment of rubber animal noses (bunnies, sharks, dogs, pigs).

The drinking age in the UK is 18, so 21 has no particular meaning there. Since I was going to miss out on the traditional “finally legal” fanfare I would have received in the states (free puke-prompting bartender specials featuring midori, midori, midori), that part of the ceremony was up to me. Somehow I managed to track down a huge bottle of Kahlua, which isn’t the most popular liqueur with the British so it took a lot of tracking (see what lengths I travel when it comes to engineering my own follies*? see?), and I bought tons and tons ice cream and, I think, hamburgers. My friends and I sat around and sickened ourselves on that load for a few hours, then we went out and hit the bars, where I switched, I think, to gin? Or something?

By the end of the night I was this blotchy, weepy drunk, making lurching passes at boys based on little more than their proximity. And wearing a bunny nose on my forehead. (Having it over my nose, where it belonged, had made my eyes cross. Or maybe it was getting in the way of more drinking? Or, you know, distracting me in that particular, drunken way? “There’s something, huuhhhhh, [eyes closed, rubbery hands dabbing at my cheek, lips, nose] something on … my, on … my … FACE!”)

And that’s how the world found out that Mama’s little girl was ALL GROWED UP!

* PS: Where is the “folly” in The Ice Follies? When I imagine hordes of sequined, synchronized ladies spinning on ice (which is something that all good people should do at least fortnightly), “folly” just isn’t the word I think of. “Success!” maybe. Or just “Yay!” I hope they weren’t shooting for some sort of irony with that name, because that’s the worst. (Irony makes the ice melt!) More probably, my brain is simply missing the alternate definition of folly. In which case, shhh!