I went to college in Boston, Massachusetts in the mid-90s. Most people know that Boston is a great city, but few realize that it’s very much a college town. Colleges — and college kids — everywhere. BU, BC, MIT, Emerson, Harvard, UMass-Boston, and the list goes on. It was a great place to live for those four years.

I learned early my freshman year, though, that to get the ”full” experience of being young and in Boston, a fake ID was a necessity. You could get by with a bad one at some places, but needed a good one for most places.

Lucky for me, I knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who was making good ones. Really good ones. In an attempt to squash fake IDs, many states were putting holograms on their IDs at this point because that was hard to replicate, but this guy was making ones complete with a hologram and everything. Legit. Cost me $90 which is a lot when you’re a college kid, but I felt it was a worthwhile investment.

Bam. Happy birthday to me.

That ID was a gem. Got me into some shady places I shouldn’t have been in. Got me into some classy places I shouldn’t have been in. It even worked at a few 21+ concert venues in Colorado and Pennsylvania which was nice because me and some friends were into this new, up-and-coming band called The Dave Matthews Band. They were playing small, dingy clubs then, but we knew that wouldn’t be for long so it was cool to see them in small rooms.

I had a fraternity brother, Bradford, who I didn’t hang out with all the time, but it was fun when he was around. One night while bar-hopping in downtown Boston, he told me a little secret: he didn’t have a fake ID. Never did. Never needed one.

Wait. What?

He told me that he was willing to accept the probable fate of not being allowed into an establishment on any given night and always just gave bouncers his real ID — the one that said he was 18, or 19, or 20, or whatever.

Turns out that most bouncers would only look to see if the ID was real and never did the math.

This flat out blew my mind. As I thought I was beating the game, he was playing an entirely different game because he wasn’t playing a game at all.