When presidential daughter Jenna Bush was caught last May trying to use a fake ID to get into a Texas bar, my heart went out to her.
Of course, like everyone else who heard this story, I did have to wonder just what was going through Jenna’s head not to realize that the several Secret Service agents accompanying her would be a dead giveaway to her true identity.
But still, it seemed unfair to me that she should have to take so much heat from the media — and probably worse from her dad, Dubya — for doing something that just about every college student has tried at one point or another.
At least, I know I did — and probably more than most. My own experience with fake IDs began when I was about the same as age as Jenna Bush when her troubles started.
It was the summer after my freshman year of college, and along with four friends, I was working as a nanny in New Canaan, Conn.
We may have spent our days there chasing toddlers and stain-treating Kool-Aid spills, but at night we would put on our party clothes and head out to the bar strip in the working-class town a few miles away.
Our tickets into those less-than-reputable establishments were the fake Alabama state driver’s licenses we had proudly purchased in a New York City shop our second week there.
With our photographs laminated onto cards complete with driver’s regulations printed on the back and a hologram on the front, they looked as good as the real thing — at least as long as you didn’t look at the uneven edges too closely.
But despite a few minor imperfections — and the fact that we were five girls from Oregon with about as much of a Southern accent as Hugh Grant — my first fake ID still managed to pass inspection for several months before it was taken away from me in a bar in Eugene.
Not one to give up easily, for the next year and a half I used just about any kind of ID I could get my hands on — IDs of friends, friends of friends, even an expired license someone found on a bathroom floor. I’d use them until they got lost or confiscated, but another one always came along.
They never looked like me, but it didn’t seem to matter. Most of the time bouncers were kind, and if they weren’t, well, the humiliation of having an ID snatched out of my hands never bothered me for long.
Name, address, birth date … until I turned 21 a few months ago, it was my nightly mantra.
Looking back on my fake ID days now, I realize that the lengths I went to just to get into a bar were probably more than a little ridiculous.
But what seemed even more ridiculous to me then — and still does now — is that it was against the law just to go out and have a few drinks with friends.
Why is it that a person in this country can legally assume the huge responsibilities of marriage or owning a firearm at the age of 18, but is not considered responsible enough to have a beer until the age of 21?
If the law doesn’t seem to make sense, then it should come as no surprise that it doesn’t work, either — especially on college campuses where younger students can easily obtain alcohol from older classmates.
There is no way to eliminate underage drinking, and maybe it isn’t even the real problem. After all, what’s worse, freshman dorm parties and fake IDs? Or drunk-driving accidents and deaths from alcohol poisoning?
Alcohol abuse is a problem, but the way to prevent it is through education, not by punishing young people for drinking.
And until the law is changed to reflect that, few college students are going to take it seriously. Not even the president’s daughter.