Yes I was.

I got drunk once.

I was 18-years-old and I had never had a drink before. Some friends wanted to ‘get me drunk’ for my birthday.

It was stupid, but then again, a lot of things we do at 18 are stupid, even when we think we’re grown and have all the answers.

So these friends and I went to our girl Ebony’s house to be slick and get our drink on.

Her uncle brought her father back some “Cuarenta Y Tres” (Spanish for 43 ) from Puerto Rico a few months prior and he’d forgotten about it.

(Cuaranta Y Tres, is a liquor which originated by the Carthaginians back in the 1800s. It is a bright yellow color and is named for it’s mixture of 43 different ingredients, fruits and herbs.

Cuarentay Y Tres is 31% alcohol, 62 proof. Trust and believe we did not know this at the time.)

Anyway, she cracks open the bottle and the air was filled with the scent of vanilla. We each poured about a half inch of the golden liquor into our glasses & sipped.

Ugh! It was so nasty!!!

Not wanting to give up so soon, I suggested we add a slice or lime like the do in the movies. Ebony didn’t have a lime, so we put in a slice of tangerine. That still didn’t cut it.

Ebony suggested we add in a little taste of soda like they do for gin & Coke drinks. Well, being the typical northerners, we were about everything Pepsi, so we added a splash some of that into our glasses and sipped.

OK, now we’re getting somewhere.

There was still an underlying bite of the liquor in the taste, but the vanilla/tangerine/Pepsi flavors overpowered that and made it bearable.

We took our concotion into the living room and two hours later had put a serious dent into the bottle.

We sat up all night talking and giggling and sipping. We made over each other’s faces and did the super model catwalk. We stole borrowed her mother’s car and drove to Providence, RI .. just because.

(Thank you Jesus for having mercy on our stupid, drunken teenage selves).

When I finally got home at 5:50 a.m. (just before my mother’s alarm goes off), I try and creep into the room my sister and I share.

I guess I wasn’t quiet enough because she woke up & clicked on the light.

“Where were you? Do you know what time it is?”

I start giggling. “Shhh! Ma’s gonna hear you.”

She sits up, “Oooooh! Are you drunk? I just KNOW you are not drunk!”

That set me off. I was drunk.

And apparently it was the funniest sh*t in the world because I could not stop laughing… that is, until my mother came into the room…

[This has been another one of ShAé-ShAé’s Stories.]