Wasted Youth

My older brother worked on his birthday. That meant he spent the night watching hungry drunk boys file into the booking room of the county jail on the advent of school starting at the university up the hill. As he celebrated another trip around the sun, he was almost certainly treated to a lineup of potential Darwin Award winners: an expressly ironic way to spend the evening.
Not that either of my brothers nor I skated clear of all the possible dangers of youth. Between the three of us, we managed to find the bumps in the road while steering clear of the gutters, for the most part. It is worth noting that none of us spent any time behind bars, considering the amount of time we spent in front of them. We all had friends who weren't nearly as lucky, and when my big brother got his job in law enforcement, he assured me that although he couldn't keep me out of jail, he could make sure I got a good room.
And thus I walked a line that kept me out of any "serious trouble." Embarrassment, hangovers, and a modicum of property damage were the currency of my youth. I didn't expect to get my damage deposit back when I moved out of an apartment. I figured that it was about equal to the damage my roommates and friends were going to do the place, and so I let it go. My buddy once gave me a funny look when he found me scrubbing the bathtub and asked, "What are you doing that for? We're not moving, are we?" It wasn't until I was in my late twenties that it fully occurred to me that getting money back when moving out might actually help with the moving into a new place.
These were, no doubt the kind of characters that my brother got to celebrate with as he marked another trip around the sun. I'm sure they were happy to drink to his health, or to Tuesday.