Everybody Is Sober Now, But Gen X'ers Were Teen Alcoholics —And I Miss That

In the '80s, I was a teen boozehound who faked an accent and stuffed my bra to buy liquor underage. It was great.

Hello!!

I love Genevieve. And I love you enough to give you this story of hers - free of charge so all of you subscribers who aren’t paying but who are so appreciated for showing up here nonetheless - can read it, and so you can all share it with your old friends who remember days like she describes here and can tell us your teenage boozehound stories in the comments. Or tell us we are wrong to glorify this behavior. Or anything else you want to say, obviously.

I have more AMAZING finds to show you here that we are just prettying up right now to give them the proper debut, but in the next week or so you can look forward to

1) a brilliant new contributor you are probably already familiar with, and

2) the beginning of a riveting new series that will be unfolding here as it happens, while the writer goes through something difficult but that we are likely all going to want to follow.

I don’t think I hit the nail on the head in making those upcoming stories sound enticing without giving too much away, but in any case, my huge excitement in life is finding interesting stuff for you and then hearing your (often even more interesting) thoughts and opinions about it.

So supremely enjoy your Wednesday. Do whatever you want with it. I will see you tomorrow - and talk to you all night here, as usual. I love you all (again)! Take it away, Genevieve!

Jane

PS I wish so bad that we were able to post pictures with our comments, because nothing would bring me more joy than to see all of your throwback teenage photos like Genevieve’s hilarious ones here - but if you have good ones and email them to me (jane@anotherjaneprattthing.com), I will make a little gallery to show them off.

Me in my senior photo, complete with an acrylic black cubicle as my "lean prop.”

By Genevieve Sage

"May I see your mocktail menu?" my Millennial friend asks at the posh downtown bar with a chic horse theme. Mocktail menus are, like, a regular thing now I guess?

If you keep up on the important news (i.e., TikTok), then you know we now have an impressive array of alcohol “substitutes” for those who don’t partake: weed gummies, CBD mocktail mixers, a plethora of N/A beers, and even non-alcoholic wines (which—let’s be real—should just be called juice).

Alcohol sales are down, and it’s not just the Dry January crowd. Gen Z and Millennials simply don’t drink as much as Gen X, and definitely not as much as the Boomers. (Who are we kidding—no one holds a candle to them in the drinking department. Respect!)

According to a recent Gallup poll, more than 4 in 10 Americans now believe alcohol is unhealthy. I mean... duh.

As a teenager, I thought I was perpetually in an old Talkie Film.

Still, I can’t help but laugh remembering that, during the pandemic, some clever and theatrical under-21-year-olds would don old-people wigs, masks, walkers, and canes to sneak into liquor stores dressed as grannies and grampas. Mad props to them.

It also got me reminiscing about my own youth, growing up Gen X. I’m pretty sure our drinking age began in middle school. Sad? Probably. But we didn’t have computers or mobile phones, so drinking became our version of entertainment. (I know alcohol can be a problematic and touchy subject—but this story promises to be a humorous one. So... humor me.)

I, however—ever known for my flair for the dramatic (and the drama departments at both my middle and high schools)—found, shall we say, a creative way to buy booze at sixteen. And here it is:

Remember in high school when certain students would mysteriously vanish for months on what was vaguely referred to as a “study abroad program”? And then reappear transformed—worldly, aloof, with that far-off gaze like they'd seen things? They’d casually drop lines like,

This is my other Senior Photo. It’s giving “Girl with a halo of big hair."

“I just spent three months learning to make gnocchi from Italian grandmothers on the Amalfi Coast,” while I nibbled on my Lunchables, a processed-food-loving American loser.

Those kids came back changed. They had seen cathedrals. They’d sipped wine at Parisian cafés. Smoked Gitanes. They were chic. And I wanted that. I wanted to look like I stepped out of a Godard film. I wanted to drink red wine in a brasserie and chain-smoke those ridiculously elegant cigarettes.

My teen girl gang from our tiny county high school—tucked into the northernmost corner of Washington State—consisted of me and a few other bad girls with acid-washed jeans, rooster-combed bangs, and Bonne Bell Lip Smacker smeared across our mouths like fried chicken grease. Our unofficial patron saint of cool? Tawny Kitaen, doing the splits over the hood of a white Jaguar in that Whitesnake video.

My best friend Alisa (who’s still my best friend to this day) drove her mom’s cast-off postal car—a cerulean blue Plymouth Reliant. We’d sardine ourselves into it, me and the rest of our girl gang, skipping school like it was our job.

We were young, hot, and bored, so naturally, tracking down booze became our top priority. I wish I could say those chic exchange students’ refined taste in French or Italian wine rubbed off on me—but no.

For me and my friends, who blasted Def Leppard and Poison from the Reliant’s tinny speakers? We craved Bartles & Jaymes Orange Splash wine coolers and Capri cigarettes, thank-you-very-much.

Gymnast by day… Boozer by night!

Of course, we were either too embarrassed—or too full of ourselves—to ask an adult to buy it for us. Then one day, after the mall lost its appeal and we’d already bought enough Jay Jacobs earrings to pierce a pin cushion, inspiration struck.

“I’m an actress,” I thought. “I can do this. I can buy us booze.”

But I knew I needed a character. I couldn’t just walk in there as a high school sophomore in Jelly sandals and Aqua Net. No—this required strategy. We didn’t have access to fancy copiers, and Photoshop wasn’t even a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye (or whomever invented it), so a fake ID was out. I had to ask myself:

“Who wouldn’t be expected to have an ID?”

And then it hit me:

An immigrant. A tourist.

So I became one.

But my little teen gymnast body gave me away. In the late ‘80s, giant shoulder pads were all the rage, so I borrowed my mother’s most “old country” looking dress and moved the pads from the shoulders to the boobs. Voila—I became a well-developed woman. But not just any woman. A woman... from another country.

I knew I had to pick a tiny, obscure nation—somewhere no one knew the accent. I settled on Luxembourg.

Yes, I was a party girl. (Does it show?)

Alisa would pull up to some county convenience store—a Mom & Pop-style Kwik-E-Mart that sold lotto tickets, Mountain Dew, and inexplicably, fish bait—and my girls would cheer me on:

“You got this, G!”

I’d practice my “Luxembourg” accent with them—something vaguely resembling Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice with a hint of nervous mail-order bride. Once I’d hyped myself to a C-list actress level of confidence, I’d square my shoulders, lift my chin, and saunter into the most remote, family-owned convenience store deep in cow country. I’d grab a six-pack of Bartles & Jaymes, a pack of smokes, and as I approached the counter, everything slowed. I lowered my face. I softened my gaze. I became the picture of apologetic foreign innocence.

Wide-eyed, stuttering in my broken-English-meets-Euro-soap-opera dialect, I’d say:

“Ahhhh, excuse-ah me... I no have, how you say... license to drive? I am from Luxembourg and I visiting. I have pass-a-porta but... it at home. May I poor-chase deez?”

And boom—out I’d come with a brown paper sack full of booze and a couple packs of skinny cigs.

I liked my hair extra crispy, like Tawny Kitaen's in the Whitesnake video.

It became de rigueur for my friends to offer me up—their sacrificial actress lamb, their Patron Saint of Underage Drinking.

I don’t remember it ever not working.

I may have been a country bumpkin, but I could summon just enough Euro-glamour to sell it.

Fake it ‘til you make it, they say.

Eventually, I scored a real fake ID and retired my Luxembourgish persona. I left her there—alone, a refugee now—wandering the county roads of the Pacific Northwest, sipping Orange Splash wine coolers until the cows came home.