"Yeah, but you were a pretty wild guy in college yourself, weren't you, Dad?"
The question propelled Bill H., an attorney from Okemos, Michigan, back in time. His son Brian was right -- in high school and college, Bill had had a reputation as a hard drinker. He and his roommates in his first apartment drank so much they proudly made tables and bookcases out of boxes of empty beer bottles. The worst part of that period of Bill's life was that he'd thought nothing of driving while intoxicated. Fortunately he got through it without a major disaster and thinks he was "damn lucky" to have escaped clean. But he was in a quandary-should he share this part of his past with his son, who was just about to get his driver's license?
He certainly didn't want Brian to take after him in that respect. Or after his wife, Tanya, Brian's stepmother. In her twenties, she had been a disk jockey at a rock station in Wisconsin and has been frank with Brian and his younger brother about her drug use in those days. She admits that she had smoked marijuana and gotten high on Quaaludes, but she always makes it clear to the boys that she'd stopped using drugs within a few years and is thankful that she quit before it seriously affected her health.
Mason Lawrence 11/12/07
I wouldn’t tell my kids anything about my past – it’s amazing I got through it in one piece. I think it would forever change their view of me, and I just couldn’t bear to do that to them. I think the voice of authority comes out better when it’s not sitting on top of feet of clay.
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