Life of a teenage creep

Babysitting. Again.

So, three am, my sister comes back to the house, totally hammered.

Lovely.

I just got lectured on:

•What a hangover is

•How being punched in the face is like drinking and smoking

•Why you don't switch from, i.e., vodka to rum or vice versa in the same night

•And about how pretty girls can hurt people when they aren't drunk.

I love babysitting for my sister. Ok, this visit cost me my part in my church's christmas pagent, but whatever, right?

So, the raves on getting punched in the face. I'll try to keep as much as possible to what she actually said, but it's more of a semi-summary...

"Olivia, don't drink. Or smoke. You'll destroy your entire fucking life, child. It's like... getting punched in the face. If you got punched in the face today, you'd probably just go down, right? That's right. Now, if you got punched in the face once a day for a few days, you might get better at it. You might be able to stand two punches! And soon, maybe even three punches! Now, that's like with cigarettes. You smoke your first and you get really high, and you get kinda dizzy and a little bit queasy, but only a little, like a heaping of this awesome dizzyness with a side serving of queasy. Now, you're gonna be all 'hey, I'd like to get that dizzyness again' so you're gonna be trying to smoke some more, and, eventually, the queasy stops and it leaves the dizzy, but then the dizzy dies, too, and then you gotta smoke a pack of cigarettes a day to get that same feeling. Without my ecig, I'd be smoking a carton of cigs a week. I don't know how good you are at math, but that's more than a pack a day. Drinking is like that. You find excuses for it, like, 'oh I'll just have a cig before dinner' and then 'wow, I just had a great meal, let's have a cigarette to follow it up' and then 'oh, I'm on break! It's been two hours, but it seems like a lifetime! Let's have a cigarette before lunch!' then, 'Work is over! I'm free! They can't stop me... from having another cigarette,' and then, 'oh, just one before bed' and 'one in the morning' until you're smoking like those people who're all 'I quit smoking twenty years ago, my husband just died and now I'm back to a pack a day' and it's like that, Olivia, only, if you stop getting punched in the face, the next day your body's all 'I could take three punches, sure', and then you wait a week and your body's all 'yeah, I could probably survive two' and then 'no punches please I'm begging you'. And, it's like that, where, I could drink, my friends and I would down a fifth a week. Now, that's a fifth of a gallon of vodka, but we'd add other stuff, too, so it was lik, 'three shots of vodka, a shot of watermelon and top it with club soda, it's like an Italian soda that gets you drunk!' and I could really take a lot, like, I could handle a white Russian and two fruit bombs and be good to drive home, but that was when this guy was coming around, and you know, I was getting beer for him, too, so, I had work, and your nephew, and I always had a spare bottle of vodka in the freezer, right? I could really take 'em, it's what's called 'toleerance', Olivia, and it's like heroin. Yeah, that's better than punches, 'cuz when the punches stop, your gody doesn't freak out and scream, 'Where the hell did it go?!'. It's glad to be rid of the punches, but, even though alcohol is a poison and your body sees it like that, you're able to handle it better when you've had it a long time, and I just stopped a while ago, cuz (my pre-brother-in-law) came back, and he was trying to stay sober and I was being supportive, you know, so, now I'm down to this,"

Mind, she was curled over the tiolet while she was speaking. Did I forget to mention that?

"But, it's like, you can't go back to the three punches, you gotta work up, and like heroin, it's addictive, and you stop, then you're all 'I can still do that' and you try to smoke an eightball of heroin and overdose and die! But, it's horrible, cigarettes, it's watching over your shoulder and worring about addiction your whole life, just never smoke or drink, ok?"