Keg-Tapping Capabilities

My thirteenth year was a good year for me. I firmly suspect that this was when I peaked, and that the time since then has been a slow and steady decline into... God Knows What. Everyone has their peculiar theories about life; this is mine.

A large part of the reason that seventh grade was just so wonderful was that, up to this point, I had somehow managed to escape middle school awkwardness. Sure, I may have worn blue eye shadow to my school photo and looked slightly circus clown-ish, but the only one this really angered was my mother who had to pay for the photo and clearly didn't understand anything about being fashion-forward.

There is other evidence that I cite when bringing up this theory.  I was dating a popular cute boy (don't judge me, it was middle school). I had great hair and the right clothes (which involved a long purple butterfly skirt for my first day of school outfit. But I swear- other people thought it was cool, too.)  I was invited to the good parties, where kids danced in basements while their parents pretended to be busy upstairs. I was able to walk around school without a hall pass. And this was my last year where I didn't really have to try at school, and therefore had a bunch of free time afforded by the complete lack of effort in all things related to homework and studying. My twin sister and I, along with a group of our friends, had charmed an English teacher into let us watch the television Dawson's Creek (rated PG-13!) during lunchtime on the old television in his room. Needless to say, I felt pret-tee darn cool.

Only adding to this was the fact that my sister was in college. College was hands-down the coolest thing I had ever heard of. Kate got to stay up late, go out with her friends, and live away from home. She got free tee-shirts from the student union, a big coup for me. She took me out for ice-cream when we visited her college. (Side note: my admiration can almost always be bought with desserts. Kate already had my love, but the ice cream really helped to seal the deal.)  On the days not spent watching Dawson's Creek, I held court at the lunch table, amusing my peers with tidbits of the "college" life. (It involved a lot of freedom and ice cream.) But there was one event that occurred during my 13th year that forever cemented the fate of my coolness, and that was the night I learned how to tap a keg.

Yes, perhaps a 7th grader should not possess any sort of knowledge pertaining to the consumption of alcohol. My mother, for one, was none-too-thrilled when she learned of my newly acquired skill. My english teacher, the same one who let us watch tv at lunch, was- for lack of a better word- bemused, when he learned of it. He found out because I wrote an free-write essay on the topic. And ok, *maybe* I shouldn't have been so upfront about blatantly disregarding societal norms and their laws, especially those revolving around alcohol. Especially someone (anyone) could have easily notified some types of authorities. Perhaps the cspca? But I was a proud child to say the least, and I thought I was awesome. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops for the world to know. I, Emily, could tap a keg.

Let's be honest for a moment, though. I couldn't really tap a keg, as evidenced by the numerous occassions at a time in my life when I could legally and responsibly drink alcohol yet repeatedly failed to tap a keg of PBR or Milwaukee's Best. It's not as though I actually drank from the keg itself, or any other vessel of alky. The incident itself is much less exciting than the end result suggests.

My older, quieter, more sophisticated, college-aged sister Kate had invited my twin sister and I up to spend the night at her college (because we were more or less obsessed with the idea of college itself, and she was a good sister). She and a friend took us out bowling, brought us out to dinner at a dining hall, and then we ended up back to her dorm room for a sleep over. It was the description of innocence. But, as these things tend to happen, one thing led to another, and we all ended up going to meet her longterm boyfriend at another college dorm. The boyfriend was also a director of an a capella group, and they happened to be having a celebration that night.

I remember everyone being terribly cool and attractive. For some inexplicable reason, I also remember everyone being pretty nice to me as well. I wasn't so astonished at their niceties at the time, but looking back? I'm not sure how I would have treated a random and clearly out-of-place 7th grader at a college party. There would have been much staring, and then much reaming out of the person responsible. Let's not kid ourselves here- college students are infidels. And a Friday night in a college dorm, surrounded by debauchery and drinkery, is probably is not the best sort of influence on an impressionable middleschooler. Or worse, two middleschoolers, as my fellow twin and adventurer Chel was also present. Debaucherous.

Kate's boyfriend introduced the twin and I to most everyone. And everyone seemed pretty cool with it. That's probably how we ended up in the back room, where another college boy was tapping a keg for the party. (It was probably not the first keg). The boy tapping the keg was pretty enthusiastic that the twin and I learn; he thought it was a riot. But I was also thirteen, so any attention bestowed upon me by a college boy was probably viewed as enthusiastic. It was attention, plain and simple. So the keg-tapping boy instructed us in the proper techniques, I pumped the handle thing maybe once, and that was it. Newfound knowledge does not always come announced with horns and whistles, and this knowledge was tucked away for future parties, ones where I could regale others with stories of the first keg I encountered as I failed to use that knowledge to open the one in front of me. It was a distraction method, and it has worked numerous times. But I always try, because I secretly feel that the knowledge, born in me so young at the ripe old age of 13, should somehow nestle itself into my muscle memory and enable me to finally, by myself, tap a keg. One day.

After some more sisterly bonding, the delightful college party, and a final lesson in keg-tapping, it was soon time to go home to solidify my popularity and write that essay about my youth impropriety and the weekend at college. When my mom took did find out about it (after I wrote the essay), she took it in stride. My sister really was a pillar of responsibility and the bastion of adult respect. It was just one of those things that happens. You get invited to the right parties, you learn to tap a keg, you peak. And then everything else kind of seems a bit lackluster.