Drinking When Young

I was an under aged drinker. But it's not as bad as it sounds. Things were different when I was a kid I guess, well, maybe about some things.

See, my pop would come home and have a drink every night after work. Not to get plastered but to unwind from work crap and then deal with home crap I guess. Usually it was just one drink of a mixed variety that mom would have ready for him or perhaps just a beer. Sometimes when I was eight or so I'd meet him at the door with the beer mom gave me for him. He'd come in and kick off his shoes, pour up the beer in a glass and sip it down. Several times he gave me a taste while I sat with him. Those were days when I could see him in a different light.

I got older and things in the family changed and there was plenty of hell raising going on around the place from us kids from the whole ordeal. As for me, it seemed that no matter what I did it was not good enough . Pop and I would butt heads from time to time on just about everything.
Thing was about drinking though was I remember him telling me that if I wanted a beer, and there was no shortage of it or any of the harder stuff, that I was welcomed to it as long as I did it at home. So I tested this out and would be having a beer when he came home. He made no big deal about it and it sort of took away from what most kids had to go through for a beer or a drink. Many, most, all of my friends would be sneaking around getting their beer which was part of the fun. You know, it was a forbidden thing to do which was half the fun of it. Getting away with it without their parents finding out.
For me it was not as big of a deal because my pop would let me drink back at home.

There was something else he told me when he and mom went out of town one of the many times leaving my brothers, who were older and partied fairly hard, to be on our own. He said to me " If you don't do it when we're here don't do it when were gone."
Hmmm, that could mean several things and to me it did soooo.... Instead of trying to find the right spot for me and the girlfriends to horizontal bop as before, I would just bring them home. One particular weekend my girl friend of the month spent the day with me and I took her all around the streets and trails on my motorcycle having a great time. Later, in the very early evening, mom and pop came home much earlier than they had said they'd be home and while down in my room with the door wide open and under the sheets, I caught the movement of something at the top of the stairs out of the corner of my eye. Low and behold it was pop and our eyes met each others. He looked, I stopped for a few seconds, I grinned, he went on his way and I mine. I mean what was I supposed to do?
It was a few days later before mom and pop brought it up with me. I replied that he had said if you don't do it when we're here don't do it when were gone. They looked at each other then at me and that was that. Sure I'd twisted the meaning around a bit from what he meant but it wasn't clear now was it?

Unlike most guys my age I was able to drink at home as long as I didn't get shitfaced and I didn't have to worry about my girlfriends being over. The girl friends weren't all that comfortable about waltzing in through the front door though and it was usually planned, sometimes not, for when we though the parents would be asleep. Them coming to my window was their own idea and not mine and was unexpected on more than one occasion. I couldn't just run them off now could I? I mean, how would that have looked?

Years later, when I was about to be married, mom and pop laughed about, and, told my soon to be wife about all the girls who used to come by at night and wake me up by pecking on my window. Even I did not know that back then my mom could hear everything going on down in our rooms by listening at the heat duct from their room above. That information sure took away from the mystery of how my mom found out about a ton of things. Our heat ducts were in the ceiling and theirs was on the floor. Mom knew almost as much about what was going on in my room as I did.

Now I'm just waiting for the day when mom and pop tell on me about this to my son. What will I say?