It's My Birthday. Gimmee A Shot!

It's getting close to that time of year again, my birthday. Since my birthday is right around the corner, naturally I got to thinking about birthdays in general. When I worked at the neighborhood bar in college, I would always get the 21st birthdays coming in and asking for a special shot, just because it was their birthday. I always hated it when people would assume that just because it was their birthday, they felt like they were entitled to a free shot. Friends of the birthday guy or gal would always order the most disgusting shots for their friend like a straight shot of Goldschlager, Jagermeister or a Three Wisemen which would consist of equal parts Johnny Walker Black Label, Jim Beam and Jack Daniel's served room temperature.

If the birthday person was cool or someone I knew, I would set them up with a very special shot for their birthday, the Atomic Stop Light. This shot consisted of three mixed shots: a red, yellow and green shot. I would make the red shot as a Red Headed Slut (Jagermeister, Peach Schnapps and cranberry juice). The yellow shot would be a pineapple Kamikaze (vodka, triple sec, lime juice and pineapple juice). By the time the birthday person would finish the second shot, they wouldn't even hesitate taking the green shot. They would always assume that since the first two shots were so sweet, the green one would be a piece of cake. Wrong! I would make the green shot with equal parts Midori and Bacardi 151. I would get a kick out of watching the birthday person nearly spit out the green shot every time. Then I would scream "Happy Birthday!"

Oh the joys of being a bartender and getting to mess with people.

For my obnoxious customers (the young punks who thought they were too cool for school and entitled to anything, even if it wasn't their birthday), I would always offer them my infamous "mat shot". After said obnoxious customer would come up to my bar demanding that I fix him something special, I would grab a shot glass, lift my bar mat and dump all of the liquid that had been sitting in my mat into the shot glass. Then I would present the shot to the customer. Either they would be so grossed out that it would pipe them down for the rest of the evening or they would be so obnoxious that they would take the shot in front of me, thinking that it would shock me.

Ha! The joke was on them because as a bartender, nothing really shocks me anymore. My mat shots were always on the house, free of charge.

So as my birthday gets near, I plan on celebrating it out of town and quietly. There will be no Three Wisemen, Atomic Stoplights or mat shots for me. But if someone wanted to buy me a shot of Fernet, well that would be an offer I certainly could not refuse.

Happy Birthday to all of my fellow Geminis out there!