During my elementary school years, alcoholic drinks were something interesting to sample when the occasion arose. I tasted sake, port, stout and light beers, wines, liqueurs, whatever came along, in child-size rations doled out by my parents. It was never enough to seriously intoxicate me, but enough to find out what tasted good to me.

In junior high, my interest in alcohol peaked. I thought of it as a ticket to an adult, naughty, altered mind-state I wanted very much to experience. In the summers of my thirteenth and fourteenth years, my best friend Sandi and I drank whatever we could get our hands on, which was not much (we were nerdy good kids). The best opportunities came during the Tree Trimmers' Jamborees where my father was a competitor, and at the parties that inevitably followed. I remember taking slugs from a jug of Gallo rose while sitting in a hot tub, trying to fend off a red-faced, handlebar-mustached tree-trimmer named Bob, who was eagerly working his big toe into the crotch of my swimsuit under the water. That party in particular was the most drunken night I can recall. I yammered all the way home in my parents' car, reading every road sign we passed on El Camino. At home, I tried to stand on one foot, and failed. When I lay in bed, those walls were spinning again. And the next day, I was not my usual, energetic self during a family outing to Westgate mall. I may have even taken only a single scoop of ice cream at the Thrifty drug store, where three scoops could still be bought for fifteen cents.

These days, even the tiniest sip of an alcoholic beverage, or a serving of wine-rich fondue is enough to set off a very unpleasant sensation in my limbs. I still like the taste of many drinks, but I avoid them because I loathe the sensation they produce, the leaden, disconnected feeling, the thick lips and loss of motor control.

My most consistent vice over the years has been cracking my knuckles. I still engage in this often, despite years of rigorous anti-knuckle cracking training with my best friend Sandi, who had permission to hit me anytime I cracked a joint in front of her. But in the last year or two, a new, possibly more dangerous compulsion has plagued me: nose picking.

I always enjoyed a good booger as much as the next person, but I had never gotten out of control about it, never abused my nose, until recently. Now the state of my nostrils is a barometer of my emotional stability. If I am happy and busy, my nose is left alone. If I am idle and dissatisfied with my life, I find myself picking it until one nostril is swollen up inside, or a scab is forming at the edges. I hope people assume I have a cold. I worry about myths that an infection begun there can move up to the brain. One evening my nose was looking decidedly swollen and lopsided, the skin getting that shiny stretched look on one side, and I kept a hot water bottle to my face till late at night. Thankfully, the infection had receded by morning. When I am driving, I imagine a horrible crash, from which I barely survive, and my shame at knowing it was caused by me looking down at my index finger to check on a nice big hunk of crusty booger-scab scraped from my poor nose, instead of looking at the traffic in front of me. In case you are wondering, I NEVER eat a booger. I just admire it, reshape it, fondle it until it seems worn out, and then I tire of it, drop it to the floor or sneak it into a crack in the furniture, and go digging for a new one.
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