Gin or genie?

Time to admit, I have a fondness for gin and tonic, or maybe just gin with a dash of vermouth. My undeniable inclination for gin as a choice of drink is easy to explain: It was my first ever drink in life. I did not start my drinking career by taking shy sips of wine or beer, or tasting the cloying sweet liquors my paternal grandmother used to enjoy along with her dense Turkish coffee. I stepped into the drinking world in a bold and brave way. I had a full gin and tonic. 

Another point to admit: It was not necessarily my choice. It was my parents who made me drink it when I was in 7th grade. The occasion was celebrating my mother becoming a professor. She was one of the youngest ever in her faculty to achieve the title. My father's treat to her was to pour two perfectly crafted gin and tonics to toast the happy news. They apparently wanted me to join in the happy hour; they did not hesitate a moment to offer me a try when I asked what it tasted like. In today's standards this incident seems horrible, but it was the "Mad Men" years, and making your daughter drink at such a tender age was not considered bad parenting. Eventually, I did exactly the same thing to my sister, 16 years younger than me, when she was just 5. I still remember vividly the exact moment. God she liked it! But soon the consequences followed. It was as if she had been struck by a genie or jinn, or literally by gin.

Starting from that day the popular Turkish idiom "Cin çarpm??a dönmek" had another meaning for me. Translated literally to "As if struck by a jinn or genie," it means to be in a pretty nasty state, or be horribly shocked or freaked out, and that was exactly how my little sibling looked. But funnily, she was really hit by the "Cin," as the word "cin" is the translation...