Let the young have fun and make their own mistakes

They breezed loudly through the front door. There’s no noise like the cacophony of youth. They couldn’t have been more than 20 years old. But they were, as evidenced by the drinks the bartender served them after he had checked their IDs. And they must have been just over the legal age, judging by their disdain at being ID’ed. Nobody thinks they look far older than 21 years old more than the person who just turned 21 years old.

One of the women at the bar asked them to quiet down. They weren’t inordinately loud. In fact, in their minds, I’m sure they thought they were being restrained. There’s no conceit like the conceit of youth.

It took two or three tries for the bartender to get their order down, as it was laced with words, phrases and names that he’d never heard before.

“So, you want two espresso martinis?” asked the bartender exasperated, and he was probably only a decade older than them.

But the decade between 21 years old and 31 years old is a big one. It’s almost as large as the gulf between 11 years old and 21 years old. The chasm between 31 years old and 41 years old becomes a smaller leap, as does the gap between 41 years old and 51 years old. The jump from 51 years old to 61 years old, no one even notices.

“6/7,” said one of them.

It looked like the bartender rolled his eyes, maybe not with his actual eyes, but rather with every fiber of his 30-something being.

Every generation has its heroes. It also has its hairstyles, clothing styles and terminology. And every new generation thinks it’s the first to do so.

Just look at them: drinking Fernet-Branca like drinking a black licorice amaro is a new thing. It isn’t. Just ask anyone who drank Jägermeister in the ’80s or ’90s, Cynar in the ’60s or ’70s, Amer Picon in the ’40s or ’50s or, ironically, even Fernet back in the ’30s and ’40s.

When Shakespeare wrote, “summer’s lease hath all too short a date,” he was talking about youth and not about the time of year. And as we pass the shortest day of the year, we recognize that youth itself is all too short.

In a few years, those 21-year-olds will start careers, or get married or have children, or all of the above, and, in some cases, none of the above. But life will take them in different directions. If you work in the bar business long enough, you will see it come to pass. That young woman going bare-legged in 40-degree weather will make different fashion choices in a few years, as will that young man. A guessing person would guess the handlebar mustache will be gone by then. But that’s just a guess.

Right now, however, all that matters is their folly. And bless them for it. There will be plenty of laundry to do, dinners to cook, cars to fix and babes to swaddle in the full breadth of their lives.

Soon enough, what someone is drinking will be far less important than it is now. But now there’s no telling them that an espresso martini is really just a mudslide, or that a Moscow mule is really just a highball or that martinis don’t automatically come with olive juice, much less with vodka.

But those are the conceits of youth. The belief that everything is new and wondrous. It reminds me of the joke about the person who just discovered their belly button and now wants to tell everyone else about it.

“I want something with gin,” said the group’s elder, 23 years old at most.

That bartender didn’t say that almost every drink out there started out with gin, since once upon a time gin was the primary spirit for cocktails. But then maybe he didn’t know; he was, in the greater scheme of things, not all that much older.

“I want a gin mule,” said the man, after a blank stare from the bartender.

The foghorn is that very classic cocktail, made famous by the Waldorf Astoria hotel: gin and ginger beer with lime. Granted, it didn’t come in a copper mug, because that variation wouldn’t come around until about a decade later, in the 1940s, when the youth of that era thought they had discovered something truly unique, much like the youth of today, or the youth of yesterday or even the youth of tomorrow.

So let those kids have their fun. Don’t shush them or admonish them if they are having “too much” fun too loudly. The hourglass isn’t as full as we think and doesn’t go as slowly as we’d like it to. Soon enough, someone will call them “ma’am” or “sir” and look disdainfully sideways at them before laughing at an inside joke based on their fashion choices, drink choices or even their words. It is inevitable if, in fact, you’re lucky enough to get there.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• How long will it be before we start shaking Manhattans again? Asking for a friend.

• “Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it and wiser than the one that comes after it,” once suggested author George Orwell.

• The old fashioned that many drink today is very different than the one they drank 50 years ago and different still from the one they drank 50 years before that, making today’s old fashioned more of a newfangled, if you ask me.

• “Go away kid, you bother me,” a timeless sentiment uttered by the legendary comedian W.C. Fields or the cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn, depending upon your age.

• “Youth is wasted on the young,” so says everyone who isn’t young anymore.