Now, I'm from Puerto Rico. Because of this, I have two serious issues about the whole "turning 21" thing:
1. I've been legal at home since I was 18, which means I've been drinking at bars legally for 3 years already.
2. Puerto Rican IDs.
I bring up the first issue not because it made my 21st birthday celebration any less of a big deal (By the end of the next week, I will have celebrated my birthday 4 times. Yeah, that's right. Be jealous.). I bring it up because I personally think that 21 is a silly drinking age. Yes, I did start drinking when I was in a much less mature place in my life. However, it also made me learn that blacking out and going crazy is not something I want to do in a public arena, especially when I have to somehow get myself home at the end of the night. Bars are for being classy and meeting new people. Drinking at home and/or anyplace within stumble-distance of my home is for being a little less careful, especially since I don't run the risk of running into people who I don't know who will obviously scorn my lack of good judgement. You could argue that young people drinking leads to drunk driving which leads to all things bad, but I argue that if you let young people drink in the comfort of their own homes, and don't make them sneak out to their friends' houses because they are the only person with a fake ID that'll get them cheap booze at the sketchy store on the corner, then those kids also won't have to sneak back home when they are way too drunk to be operating a car. But that's just my opinion.
The second issue I bring up is one that makes me way more belligerent, so please just skip over if you aren't interested in the rants of an angry Puerto Rican.
To all the bartenders/bouncers/idiots in general out there: PUERTO RICANS ARE US CITIZENS. What that means is that when I pull out my driver's license (which is one of the new ones, no longer the old fake-looking laminated pieces of paper they used to give out), I am presenting you with a legitimate, US government-issued identification. So it's not as fancy as your brilliant US licenses (which no one could possibly fake, right?). Whatever. That's not my problem. Take it up with the PR DMV. My license is real, and if you don't know what a PR license looks like then you should figure it out before you take a job where you need to know that piece of information. I refuse to do as I've been told by many and carry my passport with me. It's unsafe and, frankly, if I'm gonna be doing some drinking, then it's just plain stupid.
Please don't take these arguments to mean that I'm not a patriot. I'm very proud to live in the US. I choke up when I sing "America, the Beautiful" and I dare you to find someone who loves McDonald's and apple pie more than I do. I just feel, in the same manner as a parent who loves their child, that America should be the best it can be, and there are plenty of things that could improve the current state of affairs in this wonderful country.
Now, who wants a drink?
-Nicole Capo
No comments:
Post a Comment