Is it just me, or do holidays just become drunken blurs as one gets older. Around Halloween, I get plastered in a costume and egg my neighbors. Around Christmas, I end up having rum-flavored eggnog, whiskey-flavored cocoa, and cold beer. New Year's Eve is a night of pure shots and long-necked bottles. Hell, last Valentine's Day, I ended up challenging my dog in a tequila shot contest (the bitch ended up winning after 26 shots). And of course, St Patrick's Day was simply a lot of green liquid (going in both directions). This, of course, brings me around to the subject of this Ranting: Am I an alcoholic?

     I began to puzzle this as it seemed that all those around me were enjoying the frothy, green brew that the party was serving that night. Everyone was well into the land of drunken mischief, while I was still a few miles outside of buzzville. Green beer after horribly warm green beer, I continued the attempt, but just could not quite achieve the purpose, much like an eighty-year-old man with a stripper on his lap. So, as the evening passed, I found myself hugging the cool porcelain toilet and still sober during this time-honored ritual. Not a very fun thing. I decided to search out the cause of this problem, the next morning… once I could stomach actual food.
     Two days later, I noticed an ad for AA in the paper and decided to give it a try. I figured that if I failed to pass for an alcoholic, I could at least meet some women. Think of it people, the women at these meetings are in need to find something in life to fill the void made by the departure of alcohol. I could be that something to fill the void.
     I want to begin the description of this meeting with the fact that these meetings are in part, covert operations by the coffee, tobacco, and snack food companies. Little Debbie, the Marlboro Man, and Juan Valdez must be raking in the dough thanks to these alcoholics I have never, in all my life (including family reunions), seen so many chain smoking, donut dunking, cookie munching, coffee chugging jackasses in all my life. I have pity for the true alcoholics in life, but this cannot be a viable substitution.
     The group I found myself in included about fifteen people. Of those fifteen, only three were of the female persuasion. There was Lauren, a mid-forties housewife that cannot cook, clean, or satisfy her husband of five years without at least a few glasses of wine in her. There is Julie; a thirty-three year old hog that must have retained all the water she has ever drank in her life. This bitch was taking up two chairs, with a third stuck somewhere in between. She turned to alcohol to numb the pain of being unattractive to guys. Instead of alcohol, she should have turned her blubber-filled ass to the salad bar and the liposuction machine. And the third on the list was Cheryl. She seemed pleasant enough. Great sense of humor too. Too bad she could be my grandmother,if she was a little bit younger. She claims to merely be a social drinker, made to go her by the courts because of a little traffic incident. That kind of stuff happens.
     The guys were much easier to judge. Half of them were simply out of work and found alcohol to be the perfect escape from this reality. Larry, who did not fit quite into this category, claimed to be a drunk only because he believes he is only creative when he is drunk. I saw nothing wrong with this. Then there was Scott. Scott was a Trekkie that drank his weight in cheap beer. He claimed that if he could maintain an optimum drunk level, he could communicate telepathically with his Klingon brethren. Sure Scott… sure. Paul was a little bit closer to reality than Scott. He believed that aliens had visited him several years ago, during a road trip across the country. Since then, he has heard weird voices in his head. The only way to quiet the voices is to drink large amounts of alcohol. He was holding a very large bottle of Nyquil at the time he said this. Like I said, he was a little closer to reality than Scott.
     With the introductions of this wondrous crew out of the way, it was my turn to say who I was and admit my problem. I simply said my name and declared myself to be searching to see whether I was an alcoholic. They all looked at me as if I was an idiot. Then I blurted out something worse. "Is there like a questionnaire or survey thing that I can fill out to find out whether I am or not?" Apparently, there was no form available. Cheryl, despite her old age, still managed to throw a jelly-filled donut at about forty mph. It hit my right in the left eye. I never knew that jelly could burn. Taking the donut from my face, I noticed why it burned, that bitch had put her cigarette into the middle of the donut!
     Decrepit or not, that bitch was going down. I hurdled over Joe, a skittish twenty-year old just beginning to experience the horrors of sobriety, and found myself in front of one of the many tables full of snack food. Grabbing a handful of sugar cookies, I flung them at Cheryl like ninja stars. Unfortunately, I have horrible aim. I hit nothing but wall and Harold, a 400-pound diabetic that quit drinking due to lack of funds. The sugar cookies woke him up (he slept through most of the meeting), and he was not a happy person. Demanding the head of who had done that, I quickly pointed out Tom, a cop that drank to forget the bad things he sees on the streets. Tom glared at me, and I suddenly realized I was going to be seeing a lot of parking tickets in the future. Despite that future, it seemed to last longer than admitting the crime to Harold. So, in true Dolomite fashion, I ran out of the room, ducking away from Harold, Cheryl, and most of the others. It appears that recovering alcoholics have little patience. As I ran down the hall of the building, pants soaking wet (from thrown coffee, which thankfully was room temperature), I spied a meeting room for recovering nymphomaniacs. Hmm… maybe Dolomite has a new addiction to "recover" from for next week. That is if I don't run into any of the other gang between now and then.