I have no idea what I signed the other day at the liquor store, but I may have signed over my life, liberty, or happiness to the PLCB. I can’t say exactly what this document was that they required me to sign – the print was too fine and, after all, there was a line of about twenty other people waiting behind me, so I chose to sign whatever it was that I had to sign in order to get my bottle of booze and clear up the line of angry customers behind me.

There in my blue coat, my boyish face adorned with a certain scowl at having to wait fifteen whole unexaggerated minutes in line at the liquor store, the clerk studied my license before entering its contents into his computer, slowly with his two index fingers. Where this information was sent was unspecified – it was just entered into the computer. Why the government needs my information is unknown, as is what they will do with it, but the fact remains that to get alcohol they entered my information into a computer.

After this unnecessary act, the clerk handed me with his “I’ve got you” smugness, some sort of affidavit to sign verifying my details. At least I think that is what it is. It might as well been a search warrant or confession because I left the liquor store as worried as a teenager in a bar and I was thoroughly convinced that I did something wrong by buying a bottle of scotch. It was my fervent belief that the state police would be waiting for me at home, helicopters circling, and all because I legally bought a bottle of hooch and had every intention of having a drink sometime that Friday evening.

I know I look young. This is why I usually volunteer my license rather than wait to be asked for it, a trait, which I thought, showed some honesty and genuine earnestness before I was passive aggressively had my liberty insulted by the state. I am seven years past my twenty-first year milestone, married, a dog owner, college teacher, and am in debt, all things that are adult by most standards. But I do look very young so I certainly understand getting carded at the liquor store.

However, I don’t understand why the PLCB needs to enter my information into their computer and then ask me to sign something when I have willingly volunteered my license. This seems not only to be a heavy handed approach, but it smacks of paperwork and bureaucracy, and like most of the PLCB, seems to be a lingering puritanical remnant of the good old days, you know, of prohibition. Not only was my scotch carrying a hefty eighteen percent state liquor tax – but their actions proved to be rather taxing on my patience and sense of dignity as well. Points to them for not every government can both take your money and your pride.

I love Pennsylvania. I grew up here and I even named my beloved terrier after the state of my birth and rearing. However, unlike PennDot, I have never heard a positive said thing by anyone about the PLCB, its archaic laws, and the heavy hand of the self important and expensive state bureaucracy. I believe that Tom Paine was actually describing the PLCB when he wrote from Philadelphia in 1776 that bit about government being intolerable. Though I will make no moral judgment on the evilness of the PLCB, I will say that intolerable pretty much sums up the liquor laws of this state.

If you have ever lived in another state, one with more liberal laws concerning the regulation of “controlled substances” meaning booze, the difference is startling. My wife and I just came back from a two year exile in New Hampshire where I never once had to sign an affidavit for my out of state license nor have my information entered into a computer. They checked the license and trusted that I was who I said I was (and coincidently, I was), sold to me and moved on to the next eager customer. Additionally, you could buy beer and wine at the supermarket, but I won’t get into that.

The point is that I felt violated having my information entered into a computer and relatively insulted that the state government, represented through their clerks, assumed that I was trying to pull one over on them because I look young, and evidently, because I acted in good faith and offered my license in the first place. Good one Pennsylvania – after all that rigmarole, I certainly needed the drink.