What Happens When You’re NOT An Alcoholic?!

Don’t get me wrong…

It’s not like anyone, including me, wants to have alcoholism, I mean, then my favourite past-time would have to be dropped in favour of sobriety, and no one, but no one, wants to see ol’ Burb sober…trust me!


But I’m a bit down today, well, also no sleep…again…but I’m also a bit depressed, you see, because I took the online Booze Test, and after much sweat and strain, well, okay, no real sweat but my brain hurt afterwards, I find out that all I am is a “Social Drinker”!

The Horror, The Humanity, did I mention The Horror?!!!!

I mean, I have an entire family legacy to uphold. We Burbites (well, I could give you our real last name but it wouldn’t sound as cute as a Burbite, now would it?) are of hardy North Irish-Canadian stock. We work hard and play harder and we don’t mind who knows it! We swear like drunken sailors and when we make fireplaces for our houses, we take the last downed liquor bottle from our fireplace building party (yes, EVERYTHING can end up being a party!) and submerge it in a hole made in the hearth and surround it with cement,with only the glass bottom showing through, bearing inside a folded piece of paper of the events of that fireplace building party - who drank what, who called whose Mother what, who punched who, who walked whom home in just their underwear in minus 40 degree weather, you know, the usual all & sundry.

Yep, and we Burbites were also known for our "Annual Burbite Spring Cleaning Fest" too, as we’re an obsessive-compulsive bunch! Only this kind of cleaning was done to our bar, and each spring we would gather our neighbours, and any other people loitering on street corners who looked too stupid to know better, and force-feed them in one day, a year’s worth of alcohol so we would have an excuse to buy more/better/newer alcohol for the coming year!

Yeppers, Dom, VSOP, Bols Bristol Cream, Drambuie, Cubana Rum, Tanquery, Absolut, Guinness, Caffrey’s Cream Ale, LaBatt’s 50 (we’re Canadian ya know!), and the list goes on and on and on…

Dust bunnies would remain under the bar, along with our passed out neighbours BUT the contents of said bar were spic and span, every bottle up-turned, every aperitif emptied! A job's not worth doing if you don't do it well!

Yes, that was how spring was heralded in at our house, that, and of course, the raising of the new Canadian flag on our 50 foot pole, with all the neighbours standing in line, at attention (well, as “at attention” as one can be under the influence), while my Father shot off his rifle three rounds in a patriotic salute to our country. Hell yeah, shooting a rifle in the suburbs (and not even in hunting season, no less!) was illegal, but my Dad was a cop and cops always do illegal stuff, don’t they?

This “tradition” had gone on as long as I could remember, to the point that I thought it must be a law and that everybody did the same thing, maybe one flag and three shots per every 10 miles of Canada or something, how was I to know?

Well, yes, as you can see, I have allot of responsibility upholding the liquored values of my family, and getting a measly 63% on this Booze Test was a familial embarrassment, I must say!

But life will go on, and thank God all of my relatives from those early days have gone on too, to the Big-Wet-Bar-In-The-Sky, so my shame is basically a private one (well, except for all you folks, that is!) but I’ll not be able to look myself straight in the mirror for some time with anything less than 37% sobriety.

Pray for me will ya?