A while back, my sister decided to initiate what she called BlogWars™.

This consisted of Melanie posting pictures on her blog of me during various times in my life when it was painfully obvious I was still finding my way to the perfect portrait of coolness that is now me.

She insinuated I had started the whole thing... Sure — as if I'd post pictures of her at her expense. Right.

Melanie has recently gotten married — for the second time. Not that it's a recurring event... I'm sure Big Jim is HIM for her.

Anyway, her first marriage was many moons ago. She was still too young at that time to purchase alcohol. She relied on me for that. We were living in Hawaii at the time and the year they changed the drinking age to 21 was the year I became 21. Poor Mel. She'd been able to legally buy alcoholic beverages since she was 18. Now at the age of 20, it became illegal overnight for her to imbibe. Heh.

Back to the wedding thing.

My mom wanted to throw a wedding shower. I was tasked with removing Melanie from the house so mom and Mel's friends could get the place decorated and set up. Removing Mel from the house was no easy task. She didn't feel like hanging out with me that day.

I had to bribe her. With alcohol. It worked.

We jumped into my Datsun pickup and drove with the windows down — real fast. Real fast is relative, you know. A 1982 Datsun pickup truck doesn't actually go real fast.

We drove to a liquor store and purchased Melanie's favorite adult beverage at the time — MD 20/20 [a most favored bum beverage]. I brought the brown paper bag out to Mel and we proceeded to share. We drove all over the place, singing to the radio and drinking MD 20/20. Actually, Melanie was drinking the lion's share of it... afterall, I was driving.