Perceived alcoholism in Maine
By Aaron Anderson
Houlton High School
Jeffery Cooperman, the managing producer for the Colbert Report, contacted Marty Bouchard, the principal of Houlton High School, after months of the story actually happening and now the producer from New York has traveled all the way to the little old town of Houlton, Maine for a story.
The story of a boy and his lunch
A student walks into his favorite store in his great town of Houlton on a beautiful October day. He makes small talk with one of the owners before asking for his preferred snack during his 15 minutes of lunch. As he approaches the cooler he looks at his usual raspberry-lime seltzer and he thinks to mix it up a bit and get a Fentements Lemonade.
He buys the goods and proceeds back to the school. When he arrives back at the school he sees one of his friends. She asks to try some of his drink; he did not find this out of the ordinary because she is usually asking to try drinks other people buy. She takes the bottle, smells the faint scent of alcohol, and tells the boy. He denies it because he never had to show his ID at the bakery, but then inspects the bottle. Below the title of the drink he notices the 0.5 percent alcohol.
The boy does not panic; he is aware that everything organic has a bit of alcohol in it and knows that it would be nigh impossible to feel the effects of such low alcohol content. He’s a bit nervous still wondering if he just broke the zero tolerance policy, though, and just to be sure he takes it to a teacher he trusts. She informs the student that he should not have the drink and takes it off the willing student’s hands.
The boy then goes on his way to next block, without a second thought of how he may or may not have broken the zero tolerance policy since he was mature and responsible about dealing with it.
Now at this point the issue has not morphed into the monster that it would soon become. The teacher and the principal, following the right chain of command and protocol, sought information with the police.
Two or three months later, the student, his parents, and the teacher are all informed that alcohol activists have brought up this issue and are stirring up some trouble. The groups are talking because Maine refuses the sale of beverages with even trace amounts of alcohol such as the lemonade and non-alcoholic beer to minors.
He tells one or two of his friends; they laugh and joke about how they may sell him out, and ask him if he’d like to start going to those types of parties. They laugh about it because the irony is that out of all the people who could get caught for something like having alcohol in school, it was a kid who really hasn’t ever partied.
Public Scrutiny
Whoever is reading this is probably saying, “Yeah, right! I’ve been through high school I was a teenager once!” The reader must now trust in some self-reporting on the boys part. Looking at it logically the boy doesn’t go to parties like many others. In fact, he’s never had any alcohol other than the lemonade he had that one day. If he had been comfortable with alcohol, he wouldn’t have turned the drink in. He would have kept his mouth shut and kept buying the drink for himself. He could have easily thrown it away and not been caught. None of this mess would have ever gone public.
The Outcome
The activists have taken the issue and created drama where there should have been none.
“In a way, I wish I had just thrown the bottle away without telling a teacher. It would have saved a lot of people energy, time, and a buck or two” explains the boy. “On the flip side, so many exciting things are happening now and it’s kinda cool just to sit back and laugh at the sheer insanity of the situation, because fate could not have picked a worse candidate.”
The piece is scheduled to air on the Colbert Report on Comedy Central in mid-April.
