Occasionally, when I’m staring at the computer screen, working on an article, or perhaps just reading a fellow blogger’s most recent posting, a string of thoughts will flash across my mind’s eye in a manner that unearths a memory long buried in the wet folds of my noggin. It rises steadily, bubbling up from beneath a melange of informational flotsam, making it’s journey upward from between bits of information such as the secret opening-screen code for Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo, the current location of my car keys, a recipe for some truly excellent beef stroganoff, my 8th grade girlfriend’s astrological sign, and various Quantum Leap episode plots.
The most recent memory occurred as a result of a long but interesting posting by Wil Wheaton on the subject of butternut squash soup. (Ostensibly, I should say, it was about squash soup. Wheaton’s real fans know it was really about the reunification of Germany.) Wil talks about the soup and how he made a big mess of things because he was in a rush to eat the soup so he put too much of it in the blender and it became a scene that resembles, in my imagination, something like that infamous internet picture of “Tub Girl”.
Please, I beg of you, don’t search for that photo. You’ve been warned. If you’ve already seen the photo, I pity you, but you know exactly what I mean.
Anyway, it reminded me of two times that I made a mess of things. The first time of which I’m thinking is when I was twelve and it was Nacho Night. We, my family and I, were all in the kitchen and putting whatever condiments we wanted to on our respective plates of nachos. I reached for the Costco-sized bottle of salsa. I noticed, perhaps for the first time in my life, that the bottle said “Shake Well” on it. Well, I’d never shaken it before and, to the best of my knowledge, no one had used the salsa yet that night. It had just been taken out of the refrigerator. So, I gripped it firmly and gave it a good shake. In a matter of moments, I was covered from head to toe in salsa. Someone had taken the cap off and then just laid it back on top of the bottle without screwing it down at all.
“Who does that?!” I remember asking my family, to be roundly greeted by a bunch of blank stares. “Who would do something like this? I mean, it says ‘Shake Well’ right there, so this was just inviting disaster, people! Who would do that?”
To this day, no one will admit to having done it. It doesn’t matter, it’s in the past. It was a long time ago, it’s just… It’s just the principle of the thing, damn it all.
The second, much more recent time memory, happened only a few months ago. The wife and I had gone to the local theater in our sleepy, hippy town, to see some highly forgettable film. We made the mistake of going to the main evening show on the night the film, a blockbuster of some sort, was premiering. The theater was packed with teenagers, who are undoubtedly the worst type of people with which to see a film. The younger, the worser, too.
Earlier, in the lobby, I’d bought a medium popcorn for the wife and a gargantuan-sized Dr. Pepper for myself because there’s something about my body that requires a huge infusion of liquid refreshment every other hour. I can be full, having just consumed Thanksgiving dinner, and yet if you ask me if I’d like a glass of iced-tea, I can’t say no. It’s my alien DNA, I’m pretty sure.
We sat down in the only seats available, in the middle of the theater, in the middle of the center row, with people on all sides of us. We could not have been more centered in the theater if we’d used a mathematical formula. People quickly filled in any single available seats around us.
I’m sitting there, holding my enormous drink, which is almost literally like a wading pool full of Dr. Pepper with a flimsy plastic top and my wife asks me if I’d like to put the drink in her cup-holder.
“No, I’m alright. I’ll put it on the floor.” I said.
“You’re totally going to spill that thing everywhere if you put it on the floor,” she sagely predicted.
“I’m not going to spill it. Anyway, the movie’s starting,” which wasn’t part of my argument. I was just being observant.
The first movie trailer plays and then the second. Midway between what I think was the fourteenth and fifteenth movie trailer, while trying to remember what movie we were about to see, I began to feel parched. So, I reached down to get my drink. Here, I’ll slow down the tape so we can all see exactly what happened.
- I leaned forward to reach my Dr. Pepper.
- I got a good grip on the drink, despite the beads of condensation that had formed on the outer surface of the cup.
- I began to lift the drink.
- The lip of the drink caught on my pants pocket and the entire drink inverted itself in my hand.
- The drink slipped out of my hand.
- The drink, not unlike Michael Jordan, achieved the illusion of “hang time”, hovering before my eyes, about level with my face, for a long, tragic, helpless moment.
- The drink began to fall back toward the floor, upside-down.
- The drink hit the ground.
- The full contents, probably around 40 oz., of Dr. Pepper erupted like Old Faithful, in a fine and majestic spray, that covered the bare leg of the girl sitting next to me, my left leg, and the several rows in front of me with a sticky, sweet mist.
The girl next to me was in shock, my wife was attempting to hide her face in her purse, I was mortified, and the rows of young people in front of me were sort of unclear as to what had just happened. I immediately mouthed the words, “I’m so sorry,” at the girl next to me, as she wiped her leg off with my offered napkins. Amazingly, she coolly played it off like it was nothing, like I hadn’t just covered her in Dr. Pepper. The people in front of me collectively inquired aloud, “What the fuck was that?” Only through my profuse apologies and turning on the old charm full-blast, was I was able to quell, just barely, what I’m pretty sure would have been known in following day’s paper as the “Great Dr. Pepper Riots”.
After I’d smoothed things over as best as I could, I ducked down in my chair, and stayed there for the length of the film, thirsty, and wading half-an-inch deep in what was once my frosty, and, like everything consumable at a movie theater, unduly costly, Dr. Pepper.
Later on in the parking lot, my wife, probably sensing my deep shame in the incident, waited an entire three seconds before she began dancing to a song she had just made up, entitled (or so I gathered from the lyrics) “I Totally Told You So And You Didn’t Listen”.
Is there a moral to these stories? Should you always check the bottle of salsa before shaking well? Should you listen to your spouse’s advice regarding cup-holders? Should you buy the small size of Dr. Pepper, so as to minimize potential damage? Should you be more careful, more mindful, when handling large quantities of liquids?
No. If there is any moral that can be taken from these stories, it is this: The ability to be charming can save your ass from a sticky situation. And, even if you’re completely sure about it, tighten the lid on anything you’re about to shake vigorously.
