My wife gave our 17-year-old a flask of vodka before his senior prom. Here's why.

At a rooftop reception ahead of my son's senior prom last month, I witnessed a startling exchange.

Another boy in the class approached his father and pulled a silver flask from the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket. The dad — something of a bon vivant — flashed his son a thumbs up and a winking smile.

Really? Your teenager gets an "Attaboy" for heading off to his graduation party with a concealed container of booze? Was he also packing a monogrammed syringe?

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I told my wife what I'd seen and she let me in on a secret: Our son was carrying his own flask, filled with six ounces of vodka.

Her reasoning was thus: No matter how many parental warnings and confiscated Poland Spring water bottles of gin were counted, Asher was inevitably going to get his hands on alcohol. How much safer for him to be carrying his own supply, with a measured amount and under his own control, than mooching off friends or picking up random cups of mixed drinks, perhaps losing count and also self-control?

She wasn't thinking so much of the prom itself — a heavily chaperoned affair — but the after-prom, when kids disperse into the night and start sloshing in the limo or at clubs and at friends' houses, or friends of friends' houses out in the suburbs, where behavior becomes even sketchier. There, my wife imagined the worst post-prom, alcohol-infused temptation: a swimming pool. And guess who, lying face down?

The fear isn't far-fetched. The Centers for Disease Control reports that excessive drinking causes 4,300 underage deaths annually. A 2013 survey found that more than a third of high school students had consumed alcohol over a random 30-day period and 21 percent admitted to binging — numbers that surely leap off the charts where prom is concerned.

Asher had already proven himself wary of hard partying. The year before, when two friends went on a bender during a holiday celebration, he was the designated walker who marched them around for hours until they regained enough sobriety to return home — never mind that one of the boys fell asleep on a park bench and a stranger found his cell phone. And despite maintaining a growing collection of souvenir shot glasses from around the world, as far as we knew he hadn't filled any of them with anything stronger than Listerine.

But gifting a flask to our 17-year-old seemed a strange way to send him out for the evening. "Be careful, son — don't forget your MetroCard, your phone, and your bottle of Absolut."

My father kept a flask — mostly for warming his insides while watching Pittsburgh Steelers games on brisk fall afternoons. One burning swig of whiskey as a child was enough to forever kill my taste for alcohol. Ironically, I amassed my own amazing collection of liquor miniatures growing up — hundreds of bottles, all sealed and housed in a back-lit display case in my bedroom. I could identify every brand of rum, bourbon, Scotch, tequila, daiquiri, coffee liqueur, and crème de menthe on the market.

I was especially proud of the Polish vodka with floating flecks of gold and the sporty gin bottle shaped as a clear golf club, with an actual Titleist resting on the bottom. Friends would ogle my trophies, but the only time we ever opened any was when my mom ran out of wine at Passover and I happened to have a couple of minis of Manischewitz — Concord grape and blackberry.

I got plastered all of once — as a college sophomore downing a lethal combination of Sangria, Ripple wine, and beer. It earned me a night hugging the base of a dormitory toilet, causing a horrid staph infection on my arm that had to be lanced at the hospital. Just looking at the residual scar all these years later has the Clockwork Orange effect of keeping me dry.

Asher showed me his flask — it had a sleek stainless steel design and faux leather cover that belonged in the hands of Don Draper or a Ralph Lauren mannequin, though it was a $10 knock-off from the local wine shop. I reminded him that in my entire life I had not consumed six ounces of hard liquor.

In the back of my mind I couldn't help but think of the pathetic drunk played by Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas — his prostitute girlfriend presents him with a gift-wrapped flask shortly before his final death spiral, and his immediate response is, "Now I know I'm with the right girl." Were my wife and I truly being the right parents, or just enablers?

When I next saw the flask it was airing out on a paper towel in our kitchen. It had apparently done its job — Asher had gotten through the big night sticking to his allotted portion, with no blackouts, hangover, or other ill effects. There was indeed a swimming pool at the after-prom but he didn't feel like jumping in at 4 in the morning — what semi-sober person would?

The following week brought another big end-of-year party, this time without the six-ounce container. The results were, well, retching. But it taught us an 80-proof lesson in parenting. From now on, when Asher tells us he's going out for the night, our response is going to be totally old school: "Don't ask. Flask."