Thank you, I said. You’ve made an old man very happy.

I’d never been asked for ID before, not because I was lucky enough to look old for my age but that I was so straight I’d never even tried to drink underage, watched with tight-assed distain as my friends got wasted, and didn’t really start drinking until well past the scrutiny of suspicious serving staff.
     But to make a long story short, I was carded for the very first time at no less a monument to alcohol consumption than the original Cheers, where everybody knows your name, but they can’t tell a 35 year-old tourist from an 20 year-old student.