I recently turned 21 years old. As I sat in Luke's sports bar I couldn't help but feel like the last year had been slowly and painfully leading directly to this moment. My old man handed me a double shot of Jack and the night was on. After the first round of miserable, vindictive shots my friends bought for me, I started to see this familiar bar in a very different light. Granted, I'd just taken shots known as "The Three Wise Men", "Prairie Fire", and "Cement Mixer" but I still felt as though this was more a moment of clarity than of drunken splendor.
It amazed me how I was sitting in a place that I'd been into a thousand times and I felt like a newcomer. I knew half the people sitting at the bar, the names of the bartenders, and even had an idea of who was cooking because my chicken fingers were a little on the crispy side. Still, it seemed as though I'd just been brought into the fold. I don't know if I was just because they'd always seen me as a kid or as Dave and Kerri's kid, but I just felt like it was different tonight.
That's about all I got.
