Twenty-one

Katie D.

April 5, 2009 - 1:30 PM

Well, it's finally come and gone: the big twenty-one, an entry into the true adult world. I can do basically any adult thing now except run for president or rent a car at standard rates.

It was sort of a series of birthday events. My actual birthday is March 22nd, which was the first full day in the desert with No More Deaths. As such, I was both very tired, very busy, and in a place with a no-alcohol policy. I actually kept forgetting it was even my birthday, although when I turned my phone on I was reminded by scads of calls and texts from family and friends. My friend Maddy even called and sang me happy birthday from Singapore.

But overall my birthday as such passed largely unremarked. The camp sang to me, my friends remembered, I had a brand new pair of rock climbing shoes waiting for me back in Eugene (a present from my parents) and the promise of full access to bars and concert halls from here on out.

My real birthday celebrations have been two events since that day.

The first: two birthday margaritas in the oldest bar in the Southwest. This happened on Friday of spring break, after the No More Deaths trip was officially over. One of my new friends from camp, Jimmy, took a small group of us to a cantina in Arivaca, Arizona, where he had planned to buy me a margarita but the bartender gave it to me free. We sat in the company of grizzled biker types, under a provocative mural of what appeared to be a Mexican gypsy woman on one wall and a framed rattlesnake skin on another. One of those old biker-type women let me pick the music and then supplied me with another margarita. We were probably the youngest faces that bar had seen in years, and the whole crowd was very excited to be a part of my first legal drink.

A little different than the standard hard-core college bar scene for the twenty-first, right?

The end of the birthday festivities was this weekend: one of my best friends from middle school, Melissa, came to visit me and helped me celebrate. It's wonderful to be so close with friends from seventh grade, and Melissa has always been a great friend for me. We went to the Allen Brothers Beanery (which has my favorite hot chocolate in Eugene), Prince Puckler's, and then spent a whole afternoon at the Eugene Saturday Market. Not only was it a beautiful day at the Saturday Market, which is a perfect place to bring out-of-town guests, but my favorite local bluegrass band, the Blair Street Mugwumps, were playing on a street corner. Raspberry lemonade and bluegrass in the sun? Oh yeah.

Anyway, we did have a real college-style twenty-first birthday party at my house. It was so fun, too. Lots of my friends were here, and friends of my roommates as well. I took my first trip to a liquor store and was delighted to find pisco there, with which I made pisco-colas and felt like I was back in Chile.

One of these days soon I'll explore the Eugene bars, and hopefully take advantage of my new twenty one-year-old-status to go see some local music in the bars.

I think it will be an exciting spring.

Picture #1 is "Birthday at the bar in Arivaca"

Picture # 2 is "Bluegrass at the Saturday Market"