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An Ode To The Happy Hour

It's more than just discounted treats, it's a summer tradition.

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An Ode To The Happy Hour
National Chicken Wing Day

“Is it okay if she sits here?”

These words don't make sense until you put them in the context of bars and eateries sprawling Washington DC.

I first went to DC when I was 13 years old. It was the summer before eighth grade, it when I cut my hair into a pixie cut and was mistaken for a boy on multiple occasions. Of course, the button-down collared shirts didn’t help, but it was the time J.Crew became my religion and Annie Hall became the unofficial mascot of my burgeoning pretension.

That summer I saw fireflies, I saw the White House, I had tea at a museum I don’t remember, I saw memorials for lots of dead white men, but they are all pale—both literally and figuratively-- in comparison to my culinary awakening at the tender age of 13.

My first happy hour was at a restaurant in DC that I have now forgotten the name of. I sat on a high chair looking at the Urban Outfitters across the street. I should clarify this is not an infant's high chair but a soapbox for the drunk that encircles those high tables in the bar areas of restaurants.

It was there I learned of the pseudo-hipsters' plot conspiring to run corporate America, and what makes a perfect chicken wing: tenderness, sauce and chicken to bone ratio. There’s a science I’m still exploring, an equation I’m working on, but I've solidified some advice for the chicken wing purveyors of America: don’t skimp on the crudité and blue cheese dressing.

I went to my first happy hour before I could even experience the hour’s adjective by imbibing discounted cocktails. That summer was marked by multiple happy hour jaunts with my mother and grandmother, half-priced alcohols I have yet to consume, and the novel concept that I could have more than three meals a day if what I ate was served on a toothpick.

That summer began a yearly tradition of discounted hot wings, bar hopping, and multiple meals in succession. The happy hour became the essence of summer at a time when my adolescent precociousness was in full force; I had already abandoned swimming lessons and pools, and what I traded it for had the fantastic glimmer of bargain and taste.

I don’t remember a bar in DC that went untouched, a quesadilla unsplit or any appetizer in the entire district that was not sampled, devoured or inhaled by a Golden Girls-like trifecta of varying generations. But what I do remember is the unofficial anthem of every trip since: “Is she allowed to sit there?” my mother would ask pointing to the bar and looking at me.

My mother, grandmother and I continue our summer happy hour jaunts six years later. I still can't drink legally, but Shirley Temples and half priced appetizers are a combination that can't be tampered with just quite yet, and maybe one summer, my mother’s question will be obsolete.

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