THE UNION OF KIDS AND COOLERS

For one set of parents, the enduring memory of their son's ski trip to
Whistler was the opening act: two teen-agers lugging a large red cooler
across the parking lot at Lake Oswego High School at 8:30 a.m.

Before the teens reached the bus, the cooler popped open, and a full can of
beer dropped onto the asphalt and rolled slowly into the sunrise.

The parents were speechless. "We thought the chaperones would surely get
rid of the cooler," said the mother, a Portland woman whose son attends
Jesuit High School.

"We found out later that didn't happen. We found out some kids were nearly
unconscious by noon."

On the morning of Dec. 20, the ISTours caravan wheeled out of Lake Oswego
for a 90-hour fiesta on the slopes and spas of Whistler, 75 miles north of
Vancouver, British Columbia.

ISTours, you may recall, is the same Seattle-based tour group that escorted
Grant High students to the famous bacchanal last June in Mazatlan, a
Mexican holiday attended by fugitive Tom Curtis.

Given the publicity that graduation trip generated, you might think someone
would have insisted on tighter reins on underage drinking during this road
trip to Canada, which attracted 600 students from dozens of high schools in
Washington and Oregon. A few parents, perhaps, or the tour chaperones.

But three students who left the parking lot that December morning said
alcohol consumption was a popular part of the affair.

"People were drinking on the bus right away as we left town," one student
said. "People were staying up all night, drinking and partying. You would
check in at midnight with the chaperones, then you'd take off again."

Alcohol "was there for you if you wanted to do it," one Lake Oswego student
said. "It wasn't hard to party if you wanted to."

Owing to peer pressure, these students don't want their names used. If
vodka, beer and marijuana were prevalent, they weren't mandatory. "It was
your own choice as to whether you wanted to drink or not," one student said.

And the people's choice? "I don't think very many people went up for the
skiing," he said.

The response from ISTours' co-chairman, Ryan Smith, is straight out of
"Casablanca": He is shocked. Shocked! "In Mexico, our hands are tied. The
drinking age is 18," Smith said. But at Whistler, where 19 is the minimum
age, Smith added: "There's a no-toleration policy with us. It's illegal. If
(they find) drugs and alcohol at the border, you can go to jail without
passing Go.

"If things like this are happening, we're not seeing it."

Join the club, Ryan. One student told me the amount of underage drinking at
Whistler wasn't much different from what he sees on an average weekend. Few
notice. Fewer complain.

Smith insists ISTours is ever vigilant. They sent 10 kids home from
Mazatlan last summer when they couldn't control them. "Cross the line," he
said, "and we'll send you home to deal with your parents."

Big deal. Many parents are asleep at the switch when it comes to alcohol
abuse, whether it's occurring at Whistler or West Linn.

"You have two kinds of parents," said Galyn Metcalf of Lake Oswego
Together, a group working to reduce risk behaviors. "You have the kind who
says, 'I know there's a problem, but it's not my kid.' And you have the
kind who says, 'I drank behind the church when I was a kid, I know what's
going on, but if they drink in my house, it's OK, I have it under control.' "

With spring break and another graduation approaching, I thought a warning
about the potential dangers when kids and coolers get together might be
timely.

But I was naive. The kids already know the score. And most of the parents
are away for the weekend at Black Butte.