COVID-19 sends us back to the future
When I first heard of the above-noted incidents my first reaction was that things have gone a bit too far. Actually, my first reaction was to immediately jump into my car and head out to my local SAQ outlet to stock up just in case, like the present virus, this too proved to be highly contagious.
It does show you, though, how things for the seventy plus crowd have changed. As a matter of fact it struck me that things have come full circle.
Many, if not most Quebecers of a certain age, well remember when the shoe was on the other foot. Back in the day when the legal drinking age was twenty, there was a thriving black market in fake IDS which boosted the “legal” age of teenagers by a couple or three years so that they could sneak off to the local watering hole for a quick beer or two. The cards were often amateurish with nothing more than a sloppy attempt at altering the birth date in question. Some, those lacking a photo, were merely borrowed from an older friend with shared physical characteristics.
The actual enforcement of the drinking-age law varied from bar to bar, and with the SAQ, outlet to outlet. In some instances the attempt was met with a firm no, in others a laugh or a sneer. Occasionally, an understanding or sympathetic bouncer or sales clerk, would turn the other way and accept the card at face value. The biggest risk in all of this was that somehow the news of one’s youthful experimentation would reach the home front where the miscreant’s age was an established fact. But back to the present.
The over seventy crowd, already isolated and barred from most outside contact, is now facing the potential loss of what for many is an essential medication. What will happen? One possible scenario could unfold like this. A disgruntled 71-year-old is turned away at the door of the SAQ. As he walks back to the car he hears a faint psst! sound. Just to the left, in the shadow of a van, stands a young man in his early twenties. He beckons the senior over.
“I see you got carded at the SAQ. Maybe I can help,” he says. With a quick flick of his hand he opens the front of his coat and displays an array of ID cards. “I can make you 66, 67 years old easy. Just a quick photo, a little glue and voila! All it will cost you is fifty bucks.”
Or, in another strangely reversed echo from the past, perhaps twenty or thirty-something customers out for a bottle of wine will be pestered by the elderly, loitering around the front door of the SAQ.
“Hey kid. I’ll give you five bucks if you pick me up a bottle of rum while you’re inside. Here’s the money. Come on. Be a pal.” The young person tries to ignore him. “Okay, make it ten bucks.”
Far fetched? We’ll just have to wait and see if bootlegging becomes part of the pandemic.