If you don’t have a fake ID today and plan on going to a bar in New York City that isn’t a teen club  you should get one tomorrow morning. Below, tales of stories of Bwoggers’ first fakes. Hi, Mom!

• I got my first fake ID in the parking lot of a Ross Department Store in downtown Los Angeles, it said I had “blonde” eyes. A merciless club bouncer took it away in Savannah, Georgia.

• I got my first fake when I was vising my sister at Columbia when she was a freshman. It worked beautifully for three years until one day on a skiing trip to Hunter, I lost my wallet and someone turned it in to the Lost & Found. Before giving my wallet back to me, the security guy asked me when my birthday was, so I told him. He then took out my fake and told me that I was committing a felony. He said he’d call the cops on me if he let me have it back.

• Toronto’s Yonge Street presents, for a few blocks, a slew of greasy basement shops cramped underneath the strip clubs and sports bars at street level. Several of these advertise: “$25! Best Fake ID In Town!” I picked my first up during Toronto LGBTQ Pride 2009. It’s perfect, although it looks only about as good as you could expect for the cost: in Toronto they see that it’s a Quebec ID and ask me only si je parle français (I do), while in New York they see that it’s in French and give up trying to read it.

• I (wisely) skipped my Frontiers lecture winter of freshman year to get my fake. It was freezing cold and raining/snowing, and when my friend and I first got to [we’re redacting the name in case it’s still open], the place was closed for lunch. We wandered around in the cold for hours, but the first ID they made misspelled my last name. Identity-fraud wary and proud of my semi-anglo last name, I insisted the guy make me another one with my name properly spelled. Two Maine IDs for the price of one.

• I went to International to pick up a party-size bottle of Smirnoff, feeling like I knew what was up and how to play it cool – I mean I grew up in Brooklyn and I had my fake for like almost a whole year. When I got to the front of the line, said bottle of sminoroff in hand, the guy asked to see my id, so I – cool as cucumber – pulled out my trusty Delaware State id card – a non scan-able piece of junk I bought for $65 on Eighth Street in NYU land two summers previous.  The back of the card actually read “THIS IS NOT A TRANSFERABLE ID CARD.”  But hey, it worked – I mean most of the time.  And I never even learned my address in Delaware.
  Things continued to go smoothly, the guy did the usual glance at the card, glance at you thing, handed it back and began to ring up the vodka.  I pulled out my credit card and handed to him.  He looked at it.
  “This isn’t the name on your id.” My fake id had my first and last name on it and the credit card had my mother’s first and maiden name on it. “What is this?”
  “It’s my mom’s credit card! I promise!”
  “It doesn’t matter whose it is –it’s illegal to use someone else’s credit card, did you know that? Be careful next time,” He said handing back the credit card.
  “Crestfallen, humiliated and sure my night was ruined, I re-opened my wallet. “Hey, um, can I pay with cash then?”
  He paused for a half second, then shrugged “Sure.”
  So an early lesson in Morningside: International is tough on credit cards, lax on ids.