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Kid Rock, a father of one (that we know of), once said, “Drink a fifth of Jim Beam and still stand still.” Additionally, one of my best friends sat at a Buffalo Wild Wings bar with his father watching a football game only to realize that, after 13 tall Coors Lights, his dad never once stood up to go to the bathroom. Both of these moments lead me to believe this: I’ll never be able to keep up with dads when it comes to drinking. Or moms, for that matter.
And there’s actual proof to back this up. A study from consumer data provider IRI has all signs pointing to your parents being able to drink you under the damn table. While no, they may not be able to drink a fifth of Jim Beam and still stand still, they can still take down a lot of booze.
Some of the statistics are as follows:
Baby Boomers constitute 33% of the population of the United States. While this information has nothing to do with drinking, it’s an essential frame of reference for the facts to come. I’m no statistician, but I believe that this statistic means that one out of every three people in The United States of America is a baby boomer. Let’s proceed.
Baby Boomers purchase 45 percent of all alcohol by dollar value. Again, I’m no statistician, but if you round 45% up, that’s 50% which (if I’m not mistaken) is half of all alcohol purchased by dollar value. “Boo-hoo, we’re all poor and underpaid millennials,” you might say. But even though you’re underpaid, you’ve probably still overspent on a round of shots for your squad in the last calendar month, haven’t you? Meanwhile, your dad is sitting at his house pounding a nice scotch thinking, “Kids these days, I can’t believe I’m still funding my degenerate kid.”
Baby Boomers purchase 46 percent of wine, and 41 percent of sparkling wine. Ah, so that’s what was always in my mom’s roadie cup. I always just figured it was grape juice or something.
Of the growing wine market, 42 percent comes from baby boomers. Again, our parents aren’t ashamed to take down a little vino and get loose while listening to Van Morrison on their surround sound. Sure, it might not seem like they’re drinking more because they’re doing it glass by glass instead of directly out of the bottle like you heathens, but numbers don’t lie.
Some encouraging stats about our generation, though? “60 percent of millennials say Champagne is good for drinking all year round,” the study says. I call this The Brunch Effect and take some responsibility for it. They also state that millennials choose vodka 33 percent of the time. You know this is true because guys drink vodka-sodas when they’re in a cutting phase, and girls order vodka-sodas by stumbling towards the bar like a newborn giraffe stuttering, “Can I have a vodka-thoda please?”
Unfortunately, we also choose craft beer a third of the time we drink because, as my friend’s dad who drank 13 tall boys would probably attest to, we’re all “pieces of shit.” .
[H/T Vine Pair]
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Will
Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.
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I can attest to this. Bought my mom a Margaritaville machine for Mother’s Day and she looked at me like she has never loved me more.
RIP Sailgating’s provocative avatar
Spent Thanksgiving with the girlfriends family. Grandma pounded two bottles of wine while I attempted to keep up. Needless to say I will marry this girl and continue to enhance my drinking abilities.
I’m so jealous. I’m from a family of alcohol prudes.
just another area where our generation (millennials) is lagging behind
My dad and my two uncles once polished off four cases of beer in a summer afternoon. At the time “four” of something didn’t seem like all that much but now I don’t know how my dad is still alive.
To be fair I have given off the newborn baby giraffe feel to many bartenders
I’ve let this run through about twenty times and couldn’t care less about the guy in the background.
*Cue “There’s a guy in the background jokes?”
I more look like Leo crawling in The Revenant.
My older coworkers have told me I look like Telly Savalas…male pattern baldness is a bitch
Are all of these statistics by dollar value? If so, their outsized share could be that they have more disposable income and spend more than I do on the average bottle of wine (actually, I buy boxes, tyvm).
Even if they aren’t dollar values, people under 18 make up ~23% of the population and (presumably) don’t buy very much alcohol, so you’d expect baby boomers’ relative share of the quantity of alcohol consumed to increase by ~7.6% on that alone, making these stats much less significant.
My dad gave up the booze recently but still has a wealth of knowledge. So he lives vicariously through me.
I hit 30 this year. Though I don’t have kids, I really feel like I’m entering my days of dad-like drinking abilities. I think once you get to a certain point in your drinking career, you really gain the ability to coast rather than slam down on the accelerator. Also, I’ve noticed that like my dad has done in the past, if you mix liquor and beer you are fucked. I can drink a million Bud Lights, or sip Makers neat all night, but as soon as I start double fisting it’s a one way ticket to Blackout City.
Wouldn’t baby boomers be more likely to be our grandparents? Not sure how broad they’re considering that generation to be age-wise.
how dare you forget the greatest generation
Some of us have old parents, it’s called being a accident baby.
I hear ya. My parents are pretty young but I didn’t figure that many people in our generation have parents that were born in the 1940s/early 50s.
Dad 1950
My first job out of grad school was with IRI and yes, my boss could out drink every single one of us.