The Benjamin Button Bar Crawl

I am at a family reunion in San Francisco when the hostess notices that we are running low on alcohol. She asks her son to go to the store and grab some more. Five of us went with him for lack of anything better to do. He was the oldest at thirty, and I was the youngest, having turned twenty-one three months ago.

As we pull up, it hits me that I don’t have my license with me. I wasn’t the driver, so I didn’t think to grab it. We’re a ways away from the house, so I feel bad having ruined the trip, as we will have to go back, get my ID, then come back to the store again.

I don’t say anything to the others. The whole time we are in the store, I’m frantically trying to figure out what to do. Leave to go sit in the car? Suspicious. Pretend not to be part of the group? The cashier saw us enter together. I keep my mouth firmly shut and don’t touch anything. The rest of my cousins and second cousins grab what’s on the list, hoping he just won’t ask when we get to the front. 

When it’s time to check out, the cashier runs his eyes over all of us.

Cashier: “Alright, I’m going to need to see ID for all of you.”

Everyone else starts pulling out their licenses. The cashier then gestures to the thirty-year-old and me.

Cashier: “Not you two. You’re good.”

On the one hand, I was happy that I hadn’t made the whole trip a wasted experience and kept my mouth shut. On the other hand, I was less than flattered that I apparently was pulling off forty-one at twenty-one.