Stahl: combating her fear of beer

There are two types of people in this world — those who enjoy beer and those…

There are two types of people in this world — those who enjoy beer and those who merely tolerate it in the most desperate of buzz-deprived situations.

As one of the latter, I find the self-contained world of college to be heavily in favor of the beer-chugging subset. It’s not fair.

Not liking beer is rough, let me tell you. My distaste for all things yeasty and carbonated has forced me into years of carrying around mixed drink-filled water bottles, and quite frankly, it’s a little embarrassing.

Frat parties are a nightmare. Girls get to party for free? Thanks, but it’s not much of a bargain when I’m not consuming anything.

Long ago, when I spent my Friday nights in dimly lit basements instead of the bar, I could spend an entire night attempting to drain just one red Solo Cup.

Do you have any idea how expensive it is to be a non-beer drinker? You have to pay for vodka and mixers, or tequila and limes if it’s a special occasion.

At the bar, there are a million specials for beer — $1.50 bottles, $5 pitchers. What do I get? A $3 watery well drink in a cup the size of something I’d use to wash toothpaste out of my mouth? Fantastic. I’ll take five.

“How can you hate beer?” folks ask me. “What has it ever done to you?”

Well, since you asked, beer has actually pulled the trigger on a lot of bad decisions, but we won’t get into that here. I’m not one to publically hold a grudge.

“I’m sure you just haven’t had a good beer before,” people say.

This is true, for the most part. The kegs of Natty Light at house parties haven’t exactly helped to better my opinion of the stuff. Yet I’ve also been to places like Hofbrauhaus and sampled their concoctions. I didn’t hate them, but I wasn’t exactly ready to jump up onto a bench and sing the beer a folk song.

I’ve given my minimal beer toleration some good hard thought and maybe, just maybe, I’m simply intimidated by the notion of beer drinking. Maybe I’m just overwhelmed by the beverage options.

Admittedly, ordering anything beyond a bottle of Miller Lite, for me, would be something like an 8-year-old child with an aversion to spicy food trying to order dinner at India Garden for the first time.

What do all those words mean? Lagers, ales, barley, hops? Can’t you just hand me a pitcher of something that will accelerate my abandonment of my inhibitions and call it a night?

I was forced to to hide my distaste for beer last weekend when my friends hosted their third annual Brewfest, an all-day Beer Olympics tournament in which hatred for beer is a punishable offense.

Generally I shy away from playing games like beer pong because it results in people teasing me for aiming at a table on the other side of the room, or hitting the opposing players more than the cups.

But I figured, hey, why not. I only have two weeks left as a college student, and after graduation there are not a whole lot of socially acceptable opportunities to be an aggressive beer ball player.

So I spent 10 hours participating and you know what? By the end I was actually drinking beer by choice. It figures that now, just as I head out into the real world, where Natty no longer exists and I’m expected to start drinking martinis and red wine, I’ve actually started to come around to beer.

I guess that’s what college is really about — gaining exposure to and appreciation for that about which we were previously ambivalent.

Come graduation, I’ll know my education was a success if I can walk up to the bar and say, “A pitcher of Yuengling, please.”