I just spent the last holiday weekend of the summer really mad at alcohol. This weekend Jacksonville’s hoards camped outside my balcony on a parched stretch of sand and partied like it was 2014. There were beach volleyball tourneys, picnics, shark baiting water games and the final push to suntan before the autumn’s inevitable onset.
The booze abounded. Drunken people stumbled into the streets with impunity, nearly naked and barefoot. Bicyclists rode four abreast.
I actually saw a cooler train ride down the street with passengers astride its cooler-cars laughing and shouting until an all suffering Jacksonville Beach police officer pulled it over (to ticket the revelers for an unlicensed chilly bin?).
I’m assuming I sound very sour grapes when I say it was a repulsive, worrisome display. Like some sober hall-monitor spoiling everyone’s fun, I drove down the street with supreme impatience (beeping my horn and shaking my head) conveniently forgetting all the drunken Labor Days in my past.
Because it seemed like everyone in Jacksonville Beach was inebriated, I went to the internet and looked up: How many people in the United States are affected by alcoholism. The NCADD says:
- Alcohol is the most commonly used addictive substance in the U.S. 17.6 million people, or one in every 12 adults, suffer from alcohol abuse or dependence along with several million more who engage in risky drinking patterns that could lead to alcohol problems. More than half of all adults have a family history of alcoholism or problem drinking, and more than seven million children live in a household where at least one parent is dependent or has abused alcohol.
Who’s going to break it to these idiots? And it’s an oxymoron to call a day when no one works “Labor Day”. And it’s too hot to be the end of summer. And I hate everything and everyone at the moment…
