Turning 21, or legal, has always been a big deal. It’s one of those monumental birthdays. You have 13 – welcome to your teenage years; 16 – sweet 16; 18 – you can vote, buy cigarettes and go to war (whoo!); and finally 21, you’re a fully legal individual for the rest of your life.
When someone becomes legal, it is supposed to be their first time experiencing the bar scene…but we all know this experience is nothing new for most people turning 21 years old.
A lot of people start drinking at a much younger age than 21. Most of the bulk in high school. Granted, they don’t go into a bar at the age of 15 and get served, but they do manage to get their hands on whatever alcohol they can and they party like it’s not illegal.
By the time they turn into juniors and seniors in high school, it is almost inevitable that the majority of kids have fake IDs. Whether it is their own face on a specially-made ID or someone who “looks like them,” younger people are always trying to beat the system and get into bars before their 21st birthday.
In some areas this actually works, and the question becomes: if you’ve been going out to the bars long before you were supposed to be going, what is so special about your 21st birthday?
In Delaware, we have about seven campus bars. Each of which is pretty strict, forcing students to show more than one form of identification or actually scanning IDs. Because of these rituals, students tend to not push their luck with fakes. It’s a little harder to pass with a fake if it’s your only form of ID and it doesn’t scan.
So in Delaware, when someone turns 21 it actually is a big to do. First you have a party the night before the 21st birthday, then at 11:45 p.m. you pack up and head to the bar so at midnight the birthday person can go in and finish off their birthday celebration.
It becomes a whole new world of nightlife. Instead of partying in filthy and crowded houses, now you have friends over (or you go to a friends’) to pre-game, then everyone heads to the bar. Although it gets quite expensive, this night-lifestyle, it’s still new and exciting from the time you turn 21 to the time you graduate, which for most is a year, or two at the most.
But for the people who do not live or go to college in a strictly enforcing area, what’s the big deal about turning 21? If these people are going out every friday night with a fake ID, the big deal changes from pretending you’re 21 to actually being 21. It’s interesting because it kind of makes such an important birthday seem less important.
These people are celebrating in a bar they’ve been frequenting since they were 17, so what’s the difference? For a birthday that holds such importance as the last one distinguishing you from childhood to adulthood while still in a party environment (college), we should hope it’s significance doesn’t die out with the usage of fake IDs.
