WDL 6 Alcohol

Just back from my retirement party, limited to a small coterie of close friends and collegues rather than the huge "everyone whoever met this teacher" type of deal.  There is always a part of oneself who wants that type of thing -- the crowd that expresses anxiety at one's departure.  But really, what one wants, what I wanted and received, was a non-hypocritical celebration from people who are actual friends.  Who talk with me when they are not required to do so.   It had very witty jests -- a whole "Oscar award goes to" for various types of self-presentation.  I decided to pass on most of these pseudo awards to people I believed they actually were more appropriate for.  So the award for "musical comedy" went to Josh E. who has such a fine singing voice.  And there was one award (I forget now which -- I'm pretty blotto and should be going to bed) that I passed on to Michael Gesme, my current boss.  I remember him when he got here -- sitting in my office, watching me advise students.

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really, I'm not sober enough to go on.  Here's what I wrote earlier in the day.
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When I was a graduate student I would occasionally go to class after having a beer or two.  Not so as a teacher.  In thirty years as the "front" of the classroom, I've only had a drink once before walking into a class and that was a few weeks ago after Barbara Klett's going-away party.  I had a beer at the Broken Top Bottle Shop and then went to my evening class.  I told them that I'd had a beer.

The only inebriation I've ever experienced as a teacher in the classroom has come from antibiotics or antihistamines.  Oh, well, yes, there was that day in Italy (2001) when four of my eight public speaking students gave speeches about food or wine and then we all had drinks before class let out at noon.  My rule was that they couldn't drink before their speeches, only after.  It was perfectly legal in that civilized society to drink with brunch in the classroom.

I have long enjoyed alcohol and its effects.  Though most of my life I've been a "social" drinker, there have been times when I've used the drug to self-medicate stress and depression.  I drank way too much when I was in my twenties, twice experiencing walking black-outs.  And I still occasionally overdo, though not to the extent I did in my forties.   Several of my friends here at COCC have seen me in various states imbibery, from addled to zonked.  I'm sure they will again.

I can, of course, blame my parents, both biological and academic.  Like many writers of his generation, my Dad liked his drink.  When I was in 8th Grade I remember my folks coming home from a Gridiron Dinner of the San Jose Newspaper Guild and giving me a little bottle of Hawaiian liqueur they had received at the event.  It was sweet and I drank it while reading some Isaac Asimov stories and had my first experience of tipsiness.  Jump the Tardis ahead to 1984 and I'm in a communication department led by some heavy drinkers who mentor students in hard partying and hard work.   Perhaps drinking was a method of distancing themselves from the surrounding moral countryside of the Great Salt Lake Valley.

After he retired and until he died at the age of 90, I imagine my dad had at least one drink a day, often a shot of Jim Beam in his morning tea.  While I find his choice of spirit a bit common for my taste, I can recognize the desire to see the world through amber colored glasses.

As A. E. Housman once wrote, in LXII "Terence, this is stupid stuff",

And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.