Screw Drivers

Do you remember your first drink?

I do. Every detail of it.

I went to a university that lived in the sky, a high-rise campus. Tucked somewhere within its floors was a pub, which, looking back, feels like the most civilised thing an institution of higher learning has ever done.

I was eighteen. Naive in the way that only eighteen can be, not stupidly so, just… unformed. The world was still large and I had not yet learned many of its smaller pleasures.

Fridays had a particular feeling on that campus. By Thursday evening, the building emptied out, quieted down, everyone vanishing into their weekends. Everyone, that is, except my department, which held its classes and labs with an almost stubborn devotion to Friday. And so, when the last lab finally released us into the afternoon, my friends and I would make our way to the pub like a small, faithful congregation.

My friends drank beer. I nursed Sprites. Sparkling water. Juice. Whatever felt least conspicuous in my hand.

It wasn't that I didn't want to drink. I just didn't like beer, and I didn't know what else existed beyond it. No one had ever shown me the menu of the world yet.

Then one Friday, Sam looked at me and simply asked, if I wanted a drink?

Yes, I said. But I don't know what to get.

Don't you worry, she said. I got you.

She ordered me a screwdriver.

My friends watched as I lifted the glass. I took a sip.

Did I like it? Honestly, I couldn't tell you. It wasn't terrible. The orange juice softened whatever the vodka was doing. I didn't put it down. I didn't make a face. It’s good, I said.

They cheered.

And just like that, I had a drink.

Screwdrivers became mine for the next three years. Same pub, same Friday afternoons, same faithful group of friends filling the same corner of that high-rise in the sky. We graduated in pieces. One by one, we collected our degrees and scattered into the world.

I haven't ordered a screwdriver since I left university.

But when I think of them, that sweet, simple drink, I don't think of vodka and orange juice. I think of Sam sliding a glass across the table toward me. I think of my friends holding their breath. I think of being eighteen and unformed and completely, perfectly unaware of how golden those ordinary Friday afternoons actually were.