the vintage

in august, when i went camping with my mom, she decided that she wanted to go to a winery for wine tasting. i, being shy of legal drinking age by but half a year in america, wandered through the vineyard with my camera, taking pictures of the grapes and eating them. they weren't ripe.
what frustrates me is that no more than a month and a half prior, i had been in france, where the local old men have no problem letting you sample their own homemade brews of cassis and grape - in fact they rather encouraged it. to return to my homeland and not be able to partake in such a quotidian thing as a small glass of wine at a winery was an outrage.
maybe not quite an outrage, but just disappointing. occurences such as this bring to mind just how much thinner life seems in america - how life seems controlled. by whom or what i don't know, but i feel that my life is controlled by some large corporate entity whose scope is so large that its existence can't be proven. but this entity applies structure to everything, cuts people down and places them into boxes by age, gender, ethnicity. in my box i must stay until i reach the point at which i can graduate into the next one. the next time i change boxes is now in two and a half months, approximately, when i will finally be old enough to legally enjoy a glass of wine with my dinner, a priviledge known to every 12-year-old in france.