We have all seen them – those folks who just cannot seem to let go. Thirty-five-year-old mothers of two wearing mini-skirts, tube tops and knee-high stilettos. Those with thinning or nearly missing hair still coloring what is left and then adding a curly perm. Certainly every bar has at least one 60-year-old who sits at his command post, eyeing the front door like Napoleon at Waterloo. He awaits that next naïve little chicken to stumble into his lair.

Embarrassingly, my grandfather was one of those folks. Widowed in the early ’70s, he decided to let what was left of his hair grow long, and then he stopped washing it. He decided that it was hip to wear necklaces and call them his “love beads.” The bar at the Ground Round became his turf. It was never the same after. Apparently, the fruit does not fall far from the tree.

I made my own realization in hip-hugger jeans and a tight T-shirt sitting on top of the Ferris wheel at Hillcrest’s recent Mardi Gras celebration. I may have looked sexy from a distance, but (being my late 40s) I was freezing my ass off and getting a stiff neck. As the night progressed through a blur of Absolut and cranberry, I realized that I was the only one of my generation that was still gyrating on a smoky dance floor, trolling for beads. It was 10:00 p.m. Where were they all? Probably in bed where, some would say, I should have been.

Oh no, not this little Georgie. I gingerly poured my two, 30-something companions into a taxi and took on afterhours all by myself. Suffice it to say that, like my grandfather holding court at the Ground Round, I was holding sway with more Absolut. Wearing considerably less than I was atop the Ferris wheel, I was captivating a new generation with tales of the drunkenness and debauchery of decades gone by. Three weeks later, the image still makes me shudder.

I have had a long and unusual relationship with alcohol. Unlike most folks, the more I drink the more energetic I become. I can outlast several changes of shifts with bartenders. I have been able to hold my own with sailors coming in from West Pac. Throw an espresso in somewhere during the evening and I’m good ’til dawn – and then some. Afterhours are simply not late enough.

Unfortunately, videos of these late-night shenanigans exist in cabinets somewhere. Watching them sober can be as horrifying to me as viewing the butchering of a cow. Literally, I feel the air being sucked out of my lungs as I watch myself cavorting with “kids” long after I should have been put to bed. Had they shown these films in the first days at rehab, perhaps I would have been more successful. Maybe they would have helped others as well.

I’m not beating myself to death over this. I am who I am for whatever reason. Judging by the videos, it would seem that most people around me are having a lot of laughs as well. Whether it is with me or at my expense, I will never know. For that I am most grateful.

I’m sure someday I’ll have the epiphany that most of my peers had a long time ago. It is OK to miss something and move on. Maybe the daylight won’t be as scary when not observed through a veil of Absolut. Maybe having a “senior moment” with friends around a Bridge table will be just as cute and not as laughable.

Twenty years ago, during a discharge meeting with a rehab psychiatrist, I asked for a final diagnosis. Laughing, he said: “You are the consummate party girl. Try to remember that, like all good parties, they eventually come to an end. Your choice is, will you leave on your own or be asked to?”

It would seem that I’m still seeking the answer to that.