>>Hi Dan,
>>
>>> He was too young to join us in the bar! < g >
>>
>>No, I wasn't!!!! ;-) I just had to show my ID. The only time I couldn't was when we were visiting some place and I forgot my ID in the hotel room.:-( Who would think of carrying an ID five years after being able to order a glass of wine at any restaurant at home. <g> Well, but you still have strange rules in the US. They seem to card anyone looking younger than 26-30 in some states (Oregon, Washington) and don't accept official documents like the ID, only unofficial ones like a driver's permission. That is confusing when they want to see my driver license when I pay by credit card. The license still has my old name on it, the credit card the new name. Obviously, the signature looks different, as well. So far, nobody objected that. <g>
>
>Hi Christof,
>
>this reminds me of the DevCon in La Quinta in 1999. My eldest son, 20 at that time, also attended the conference, and his brother, 19 at that time, joined us at the last day of the conference, for two weeks of vacation after the conference. I took them both to the restaurant the first evening, and said that I really looked forward to have a beer together with them. You can imagine my disappointment when the waiter told us that you had to be 21 to buy anything with alcohole in USA. You can drive a car when you are 16, but you have to be 21 to buy alcohole. What's the logic in that? Luckily we both come from countries with more logical laws. :-)

And you can die in a war at 18.