I never had a fake ID. There was a time when I was 19 when some friends and I were trying to hook up with a guy who had a huge board painted up just like the background of a New Mexico driver's license. He wanted $65 for each ID, but the deal never happened. Our chief concern was not that we couldn't get alcohol (there were many people over 21 who would buy for us), but that we couldn't see bands we wanted to see because they played in bars.

In New Mexico, you cannot be in a bar unless you're 21. There have been amendments to this in the last five years, and at underage shows there are large barricades, fences, and Plexiglas doors that separate the drinkers from the kids. But back in the early nineties, the only shows we could go to were big coliseum shows and Fugazi at the Sunshine.

A couple of my friends did end up getting fakes of one kind or another. One of my roommates had one so bad that if he took it out of the clear license showcase in his wallet, it would fall apart. But there were a few liquor stores that accepted it, and he never got caught.

A few months before I turned 21, my younger brother took my birth certificate and a payroll stub to the DMV, told them he'd lost his license and got one with my info (but his picture): a fake ID that would suddenly become valuable when I turned 21. A note to those who might this is a good idea: you can't do this anymore. Tremendous strides in technology have closed this way of obtaining a legal "fake" ID. But back then, it meant that he could go to shows, buy alcohol and basically function as a young man two and a half years his senior.

Last weekend the Prez's twin daughters (both 19) were eating and trying to drink at a restaurant. One of them got a margarita using a fake ID, a little while later the other one tried to score a drink with the same ID. It didn't work. While they are twins, they have different hair colors (I don't know if this is genetic or technologically enhanced) and, presumably, the waiter noticed that the same fake ID was being offered. As this is the second underage drinking charge (called M.I.P.'s when I was in school) for Jenna (the more famous of the twins because of tabloid pictures of her drunken hugging of a friend--described as a "wild drunken lesbian night of fun" by the tasteful grocery store rag), she could lose her driver's license among other punishments because of a law her father enacted in Texas while he was governor.

In some circles we call this kind of predicament "irony."

But since I really don't care about the exploits of the Bush twins so much and can't really, in good conscience, condemn the girls for their actions (they're doing exactly what I did when I was 19--except they're getting caught), I've decided to rally against the gray time of life between the ages of 18 and 21.

When kids turn 18, they are no longer, in the eyes of the state, children. Anyone can have sex with them without fear of prosecution, they can vote, have an abortion, be prosecuted as an adult and work at any job they are qualified for. Before this, most activities must be accompanied by a note from the parents. Turning 18 changes all of that, but it doesn't change everything.

They cannot drink and are not considered adults by people over 21. They are in the trap of being too old to be kids, but too young to be adults. And many of these kids are in college with easy access to alcohol. But they are told, look but don't touch. They still have to grow up, even though the difference between 18 and 21 is negligible as far as brain growth goes and most people are relatively full grown (physically). They are cut off from kids under 18 (there are those pesky statutory rape laws--and who wants to go back to high school so soon after graduating?) and from "adults" 21 and over (who wants to go out with someone who can't come along to the Spring Crawl?). The country's drinking laws have made the three years between 18 and 21 a purgatory.

The reason for this strange growing up time for America's youth is a link between state's alcohol laws and federal highway funds. In the early 80s, when drunken driving began to get nationwide coverage as the great new scourge on the lives of decent Americans, the government decided to make M.A.D.D. happy by tying all federal highway funds to state drinking ages of 21. If a state did not want to change their laws, they would not get any federal money to fix up their roads. Guess what? Every state complied.

But I think legalizing marijuana has a better chance of happening than the government allowing states to lower their drinking ages. So this gray time between 18 and 21 will continue to exist. And the Bush twins will probably get into a little more trouble before they hit the golden age of 21. Somehow, I don't think the twins are going to stage a political rally to legalize their drunken exploits. Their main concern seems to be trying to cope in an extremely strange world of being 19-year-old celebrities for no other good reason except that daddy is the president of the country.

Matt Worley still gets carded and occasionally wonders how he would prove that he is really 29 if his license was questioned.