Oh Really?

You know it's kind of weird how much you find out about people once they start drinking. I don't mean start drinking at the beginning of an evening, I mean when they reach the point in their life when they decide it's ok to start drinking. In Pakistan that has become a ridiculously young age, something as ridiculous as thirteen or fourteen?
Anyway as we get older we watch our younger generation reaching that point, it's incredible how drastically they change. Suddenly they have an excuse to do and say everything and anything they ever wanted secure in the knowledge that they have the great morning-after disclaimer of "Oh really? I was drunk I don't remember."
It's funny when you have a few years of solid drinking under your belt that you can see right through this and realize that it is very, very seldom that you get so tanked that you don't remember things you said and did (depending on who you are of course).
Also when you do black out completely, it's totally terrifying! and you don't just casually say "Oh really? I don't remember." You wake up in panic with your brain sliding painfully from one side of your skull to the other, an incessant ringing in your ears and the desperate question "What the hell happened last night?"
The over casual, desperately nonchalant "Oh really?" is a sure admission that you do in fact know exactly what's what and are trying really hard to pretend that you don't.
So a tip to the new drinkers of the world...if you did something that's making you blush the next day, jolt out of bed, roll under the table, kick your unconscious friend awake and shout "What the hell happened last night?"