I’ve lived 19 of my 21 years in Metairie. When I travel, I usually call my hometown New Orleans, because let’s face it, no one knows where Metairie is. Even you out-of-state kids only consider it as a couple of malls and some interstate exits before the airport.

I like to consider myself born in the wrong place. Surely I’m too worldly and intellectual for such a non-historical town as Metairie. New Orleans is more my scene with its artists, music and non-stop partying.

Similarly, I’ve also spent many a Mardi Gras in Metairie. My attic is still filled with plastic bags containing broken beads and more cups than soccer and hockey combined. But as much fun as shindigs in the suburbs are, my years at Loyola have introduced me to the parades and parties that make up the Crescent City Mardi Gras season. And this Mardi Gras should have been the greatest.

But the Metairie in me, no matter how much I try to ignore it, has its hold on me. And although I was watching Zulu pass me by, I made it a Metairie Mardi Gras all over again.

After the purgatorial 12 months that were my 20th year of being me, I finally reached the all-access pass of 21.

But oh, this birthday would be different. See, I was born Feb. 20, and as I am sure you’re still dealing with the aches and pains from raising your hands in the pursuit of individually hand-crafted pearl necklaces and the inevitable struggle with a 70-year-old woman that follows, you’ll remember that that was Mardi Gras day.

My 21st birthday was in New Orleans on Mardi Gras Day. Surely, I gave the Christian fundamentalists a lot more things to blame hurricanes on.

We are all quite aware New Orleans is a bit different than the rest of the country. If you want to drink here, you can drink, and not just in your friend’s basement. No, New Orleans is its own breed. We said “How about this? We’ll build under sea level so we won’t even have basements, and oh yeah, we’ll drink and be merry.”

It’s odd traveling elsewhere. Like the setup to a joke with an unfunny punch-line, I walk into a bar, say “Bartender, make me a drink,” and he says: “Can I see ID?”

“I don’t know anybody named ID,” I say.

People 18 years of age and older should be allowed to drink anywhere in the nation if they possess a valid Louisiana ID. It’s only fair.

But I digress. Remember, 21. In New Orleans. And instead, I did it prohibition-style. No alcohol. Whatsoever. None.

Metairie’s grip is tightening.

Of course, I was going to the casino, too. Why not? Free drinks which gives me more money to blow on blackjack, smoking a fat stogie and possibly getting a free early-morning meal at the buffet.

Thanks to parents who make weekly trips to the Gulf Coast, I’ve become well-versed in the ways of casinos. They waste their money in those coin-eating machines called slots, but the tables are where it’s at. No, it’s cards for me, with a variety of games that initially appear to provide some chance at winning, although that damn dealer always wins.

I made my way to Harrah’s on Wednesday night. I didn’t get a free drink. I had no cigar. I was too scared to play the tables. Instead, I lost $40 in, of course, the slot machines. Just like my suburbanite parents.

Metairie’s knuckles are turning white.

Metairie and New Orleans are similar, sort of. We are both cities based on consuming: getting fat on impossibly unhealthy food, cramming our already bursting bodies with buckets of alcohol and positioning our top-heavy, teetering and tipsy selves on a stool in front of a machine singing gleefully about the money it will soon devour.

But New Orleans is … well, New Orleans.

And Metairie is … next to it.

Shawn Dugas is an English major from Metairie.