College, even community college, holds some similarities with high school.

You read stuff, write stuff, learn stuff, until you’re totally stuffed. But despite these similarities, and obvious ones (for example, both have bathrooms), most similarities end there.

More importantly, there are appealing differences. A student at MHCC can sit down out in the open, pull out a Marlboro, light it, and feel free to admit that they did inhale.

Students can actually skip class, come in late, or leave without the worry of after school detention. And in the same vein some students actually choose to stay after school. There is no longer the dollar bill on the ground while bullies perch like vultures waiting for naïve freshmen to pick it up and set off the bullies for the pounce.

Discrimination flew the coop, humiliation ventured south, and ostracism is for the birds.
But hold the cell phone; a remnant of exclusion transfers here to MHCC. There is a rift dug between the ranks at college: Half of us can legally drink. Watch out, because there are minors hanging around.

It’s as if they speak a different language. Sober-ish.

In all seriousness, as soon as anyone turns 21 they receive a letter within thirty days, which holds their alcoholic membership card. And for those who believe in “21 at 21,” when newbie adults take 21 shots from midnight to the first two hours of their ascension into the age of alcohol, they receive their puking-ambulance-ride-hangover membership card from an E.R. R.N. with a P.B.R. stomach pump.

Alert! Some of those, who remain unaware of the term “shoulder tap,” do not drink alcoholic beverages. As unsettling as it might seem, that means those who can drink go to the Copper Penny or Club 205, whereas those who can’t go to City Limits and Starbucks. Starbucks? No wonder they’re wired.

Ignoring the law isn’t an option, but if it were, then we could all hold hands at the same hang out and indulge in a proper toast to our integration.

If we can go to war at 18, why can’t we have a drink? As a society aren’t we trying to destroy boundaries, prejudices, and ostracizing? Why the segregation? Wasn’t it Lennon who sang “Come Together” and “Imagine”?

Shouldn’t we take all our great lessons from rock songs such as “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”?