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| beer #100, but if you want to hear the whole story, you have to start with #1. that's right, it's like how i met your mother. just read the prologue as if i sound like bob saget. |
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They say that you always remember your first…anything. It’s like some sort of moment frozen in time that even Al Gore’s greenhouse gases can’t drill a hole into and melt the polar bears of memories. Memories are possessions that you share only with yourself and whoever was lucky to be there with you. True memories are forever.
By some sort of divine irony, I remember exactly where I was when I had my first beer. It’s like the start of Forrest Gump. You know it's funny what a young woman recollects? 'Cause I don't remember bein' born. I don't recall what I got for my first Hanukkah and I don't know when I went on my first outdoor picnic. But I do remember the first time I drank my first beer. Granted, I don’t remember the second or probably the fifth that night, but I recall my first beer I finished.
I had just moved into an off-campus apartment. I was about two months past my 18th birthday. I had the insurmountable weight of weightless freedom pressing heavily on my shoulders. Going to college is stressful because you don’t know what your first act of rebellion is going to be. Forget academics and getting a job. Your biggest concerns are: Maybe I’ll dye my hair purple. Maybe I’ll smoke weed. Maybe I’ll lose my virginity. Instead of these glorious pursuits, my descent into depravity came at the hands of a mini keg of Heineken.
You probably know what I’m talking about. Those small metal kegs of domestic beer that make once-varsity lacrosse players look like gods at parties. There probably weren’t more than 12 beers in that little tub of carbonation. Yet, here I was, still fragranced with the sweet suburban air of Connecticut and missing the presence of parental figures. They had just left in the SUV up 95 North, leaving me in this Maryland student apartment. I met a girl moving in at the same time with a similar story. We exchanged numbers and she called me that night, telling me that boys had moved in and they were throwing a party.
I wasn’t popular in high school. I was well liked, sure, but I wasn’t the type who went to the elusive hangouts to drink with the basketball team, score points on the softball field, or join the math honor society. I was a quiet, respectable and genuine person. Needless to say, I wanted college to change that. Well, at the very least, I wanted to stop being quiet. At the ‘party’, which consisted of my new friend Holly and three boys, the plastic cups came flying out at a speed that only a Vegas dealer can emulate. I’ve learned of this mysterious sport called beer pong, but only through teen movies and whispers exchanged that I overheard during pre-calculus. The premise seemed simple. Like all sports, get a small ball into an opening. Like mini golf, but the balls could bounce and there were less sand traps. Oh, and there was beer.
I was drafted immediately into the first round because I had tits. I paired with some guy who may or may not have been named Scott. I can’t remember. I wasn’t too bad, and sunk two cups within the first few rounds. When the mighty instruments of the beer sport soared magnificently from our opponent’s hand into our cup territory, and bounced of the rim into the middle row, the splash seemed loud to my virgin and sober ears. Almost like a large ice burg slamming into the Arctic Ocean due to those aforementioned greenhouse gases. I knew I had to drink it. Scott was hammered. Like the gentleman he was, he handed me the cup and the other team hollered ‘Drink up, bitch!’.
I looked down at the golden brown liquid, sniffed gingerly and brought it to my mouth. The phrase ‘pounding a beer’ wouldn’t be part of my lexicon for another month. I sipped it tentatively and was surprised at its bland yet bread-like taste. I tried it again. It wasn’t pungent like bourbon or sharp like the Smirnoff I had started my night off with. I still didn’t like it, but I pretended to chug it while sipping it surreptitiously throughout the round. I vividly remember the phrase ‘This isn’t as bad as I thought it would be’ going through my head as the red Solo cup embraced my timid lips and reached completion five minutes later. Scott and I won the game, and we progressed onto the second game in the never-ending tournament that is beer pong. I had to drink close to a dozen more cups that night. The bubbles reminded me of soda and the taste reminded me of the bread of a sandwich just about to go stale. Not terrible but not something I would seek out voluntarily. Thank God I changed.
And that was my first beer. Fast forward to my “now”, January 2011. I’ve graduated college. I still live in Maryland but not in College Park anymore. I have a job despite this terrible economy. At this point in my life, I live with two guys, each one about ten years older than me. They have jobs and I moved in with them because I assumed older guys had their shit together and didn’t PMS like some of the girls I lived with in college. I was right about one of those things. Age, as I’d later figure out during the course of this year, is just a number. It’s what you do with those numbers, like the lottery, that make all the difference.
Single men in there thirties love beer. When I moved in, there was a decent collection of what I deemed to be good beer in the fridge. This meant two things—it wasn’t an aluminum can and it cost more than $7 for a six-pack. At this point, I was drinking beer if it was offered to me, but I wasn’t buying it unless I was planning to drink with my guy friends. I remember loading 5 bottles of Shiner Bock with me as I moved out of College Park and feeling my father’s quiet glance of questioning concern as I packed up my fridge. Those Shiners lasted three days in the fridge as my new roommate Clyde assumed they were my other new roommate Alex’s and downed them during the course of an evening. Five beers in one evening, at this point in my life, seemed remarkable.
I noticed they were gone that morning, but magically they were replaced that night. I joked about the presence of the beer fairy and Clyde apologized profusely for this. I figured he was skittish about the presence of a 22-year-old outgoing (told you I'd get rid of the quiet) female in his previously male living situation. Alex, who I shared the floor with, was an overly friendly beer drinker. He had the Beer Advocate bookmarked on his iPhone and tracked his beer consumption with the detailed precision of a Supreme Court stenographer. I asked him why he devoted so much effort to this record keeping and he informed me that he wanted to try 210 different beers in 2010. I was impressed. This was real skill. Sort of. Alex had a beer stuck to him the way Linus always had his blanket. Perhaps beer was Alex’s blanket. It is certainly cooler than carrying around a dirty blue rag and his tenacity made him fun at parties.
Maybe I wanted to fit in with my new male counterparts. Maybe I wanted to set myself apart from other girls. Maybe I was bored and maybe I was tired of drinking vodka cranberries every time I went out. A cocktail of all these reasons was the impetus for my 2011 New Year’s Resolution: I, Sharon Rosenblatt, would try 100 new, never before had beers, in one year. The premise is simple. I must consume at least half of one beer I’ve never had before in my life. I can have different beers from the same brewery. They can’t all be from America. I must try to get as many as I can on first dates to avoid paying for them. I must hit 100 new beers by December 31, 2011. I must start this on January 1, 2011. Failure, as they say, is not an option.
The following 100 chapters are anecdotes of the moments I can remember and those that I wish I didn’t focused around where I was, who I was with, and what (and sometimes who) I was doing was when I drank that beer. I tried my best to capture how I was feel then without tainting it with my feelings currently. I wish I had enough discipline to write as the events were happening but let's face it, I was too busy drinking. Obviously, people change. You fall in and out of love. Like beer, what tastes good one night is a terrible hangover the next day.
Sometimes I don’t remember everything and chapters are shorter. Sometimes I remember too much. As The Office’s Jim Halpert mocked fellow character Andy Bernard, the phrase rings triumphant with a new truth: “Lord, beer me strength”.
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