I started drinking beer during my sophomore year of high school.
I went to Catholic grade school, where I was terrified of getting in trouble, so I fell in line and did what I was told, acting or thinking very little for myself. But when my family moved across town and up the street from a public high school, I had a choice to take another road: dressing how I wanted, making friends with whoever I wanted, and taking the electives I wanted.
The only problem was, after containing myself to a mold for all those years, I didn’t know what I wanted. I was a shapeless egg of putty that perfectly replicated whatever comic strip I happened to be pressed against. I was selfless in the most literal sense of the word.
Freshman year, I had been adamantly against drinking, going so far as to join Students Against Drunk Driving (S.A.D.D.) and breaking up with my first high school boyfriend because someone told me they saw him at a keg party. I was shy and the new kid in a school where the others had …
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