Tag Archives: cocktail

Daiquiri

Daiquiri: (n) a cocktail of rum, lemon or lime juice, and sugar,

It should be our greatest concern.

Of all our fears, apprehensions and iniquities that may abound within our human heart, we should certainly avoid being phony.

You can get by with twice the sin normally tolerated if you’re willing to admit your oddity instead of trying to argue it in the form of a question.

In other words:

“Are you asking me if I did this?”

“Don’t you believe me when I say I didn’t?”

“You know me better than this, don’t you?”

I went through a stage in my life when I was convinced that I lacked cool, sophistication and originality because I didn’t drink alcohol. When I was a very young boy, I battled bronchitis and was given many concoctions to clear my tubes so I could breathe.

All of these tasted like the alcoholic beverages that have ever been set before me.

I don’t drink alcohol—because it makes me feel like I’m sick. It tastes bad and I just don’t care for it.

But because I felt under pressure, I tried drinking wine with dinner, and when I went out with friends, would order a drink.

Nothing strong. Nothing that came out of a bottle of its own.

No, I nursed along mixed drinks.

And a daiquiri was one I found I could tolerate—as long as it had a sweet, fruit flavor.

I never finished one. I left that to my wife or another nearby friend.

But the ice was kind of nice—similar to a Slushee. Yes, a bitter Slushee with a strong after-kick.

I felt stupid about the pretense.

Finally, one night I ordered a daiquiri, and someone laughed at me, saying it was a “girly drink.”

It landed in my brain with a thud. I was trying to do this drinking to make myself seem relevant and manly but failing miserably because I wasn’t prepared to take in the hard stuff. (Captain Daniels, the scotch.)

That night, in that moment, I turned to those at the table—at least a dozen of my closest—and said, “Behold, a goddamn phony. I despise alcohol. I have no intention of drinking it again. You may feel free to pursue it without my condemnation, but I will no longer act out the part of an adult by having a drink in my hand.”

I was surprised to discover that there were three people at the table who were drinking because they saw me do it—and even though they hated it, they thought it was important to do because of my imbibing.

This was my last daiquiri.

I have not missed it.

And I must warn you that sometimes your footprint is what the person behind you is using to try to walk straight.

Country Club

Country club: (n) a club offering various social activities

I grew up in a town of fifteen hundred people, and that’s fourteen hundred and ninety-nine if you deduct me.

It was small.

Yet it yearned to gain the respectability of another town ten miles away, which had just become a city, and by the way, in becoming a city funny wisdom on words that begin with a Cwas desperately trying to keep up with the metropolis ten miles south of it.

For you see, it’s not so much that the “grass is greener on the other side of the fence.” It’s just that often we’re envious that our neighbor has a fence.

My little town wanted to have a golf course. We didn’t need a golf course. There actually was a greater demand for a teen pregnancy center. But I digress.

Yet some investors from the medium-sized city in between came together with the small-town folk surrounding me and built a golf course on the only land available at the time—which was a hilly piece of property that ran right alongside a major road.

I will not get into the fact that the golf course was not exactly ready to host the Masters. But shortly after it was constructed, those who were playing golf realized that they didn’t have a country club on the grounds.

Where were you to go after slogging your way through eighteen holes, lying about your score, to sit with some friends and enjoy a cocktail while discussing the finer points of your pointless activity?

I was convinced there would never be a country club.

Matter of fact, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to be.

There were two reasons. The first was that our small town did not require a golf course, let alone a nineteenth-hole watering-area for the few golfers who could actually climb up and down the hills.

But the main reason I didn’t want us to have a country club was that I knew we didn’t have much money and it would be really shitty.

But it was voted in and it was built. It was just a little bit bigger than a Dairy Queen, and only contained four booths. It looked like one of those small-town diners that stays open because twenty-five people go to church with the owner.

It was embarrassing.

Matter of fact, after a while, people stopped calling it a country club and referred to it as “the place.”

“After we get done playing golf let’s go to the place.”

The name was so ambiguous that it fit our small-town country club just jim-dandy.


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Anti-retroviral

dictionary with letter AAnti-retroviral (adj) working against retroviruses, especially HIV.

The advantage of living your life and seeing the decades pass is realizing the blessing of coming across moments in time in which great transitions of spiritual awareness and social consciousness are transpiring, and knowing that you have an opportunity to acquire a better path of understanding instead of marching in the “asshole parade” down to spit in the river.

This happened to me in 1983.

Most people may forget that particular era, and I concur that much of it is worthy of a mental lapse. We were in a self-indulgent, pious, uncertain, semi-prospering, silly and trivial era.

While we were all prancing around admiring each other’s hairdos and duds, a virus arrived on the scene. The preliminary investigation of this deadly disease seemed to indicate that it was targeting the homosexual community. (Yes, back then, they were homosexuals, We were certainly not prepared for them to be “gay.”)

This played right into the hands of many opponents of the lifestyle, and there was word on the street that it was a “gay plague,” sent by God to express His displeasure and anger over “huggy-kissy” with brothers and brothers and sisters with sisters.

Matter of fact, I found myself in the middle of several such discussions, as people shook their heads, displaying a bit of awe and wonder over the power of God in expressing His judgment.

It would have been very easy to keep my mouth shut–and I suppose, more profitable for the sale of my books and such.

But there are two things I knew to be true:

God is love.

I refuse to believe that love has to kill anything to make its point.

And secondly, if God is so uncreative that the only way He can express Himself is by cursing those who disagree with Him, I find Him extraordinarily boring.

So since I knew that God was love and I did have an interest in Him, I surmised that a terrible sickness had come into our midst which would eventually affect everybody, so the sooner we found medication or perhaps a vaccine for this horror, the better off we would be.

Knowing that the most intelligent practice in fighting any evil is to engage your wallet, I donated to study and conquer this virus, which eventually became known as AIDS.

Cooler heads prevailed, and once they were cooled down, they began to think again. Isn’t that amazing?

And soon a drastic cocktail of concoctions was mixed together, and even though it was extraordinarily vicious in its side-effects, it addressed an aching need and saved thousands of lives.

So what is my conclusion?

People who believe in a God who is still stuck somewhere on Mt. Sinai, afraid to climb down, are soon forgotten.

And those who believe in a God who walks on water to help His children … live to praise Him and help others.

 

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Antibiotic

dictionary with letter A

Antibiotics (adj): a medicine such as penicillin which inhibits the growth of or destroys microorganisms.

There are two kinds of knowledge.

There is the current information available through research, discovery and even the sharing of hypotheses.

And then there are personal encounters which we all have with various subjects which grant a peek into the inner workings.

Now, some people swear by pursuing educational tools to learn about the universe and its various parts. Other folks are more intent on having a close encounter of the first kind with what they receive.

So when I look at the word “antibiotics,” I don’t immediately jump on Wikipedia and find out what the scientific community has to say about these chemicals which we refer to as “wonder drugs,” but rather, to take just a moment and tell you that for a very brief season in my life, I found myself septic and in need of pouring these concoctions into my system to counteract infection.

They do have truth in advertising, In other words, they are antibiotics, which means they are against all forms of life. They don’t just kill the bad guys in your blood stream, but while they’re there, are very willing to become hit men to all the good ones wearing white hats.

So even though I was appreciative of the cocktail of medication provided for me, I found myself having to take other pills to counteract the effects the antibiotics had on my “happy places.”

All sorts of little blurps came up on the screen during this season of healing. It let me know three very important things:

1. Antibiotics are good because they do attack the bad.

2. Antibiotics, being strong, destroy anything in their path that’s weak.

3. They should be used as infrequently as possible.

So even though I know that many folks swear by antibiotics, by the time I got done interacting with them, I was swearing at antibiotics.

I am not in a hurry to make reacquaintance or have a reunion. My sentiment about antibiotics is similar to my feeling about the sun: it is very nice to enjoy on a day when you’re going to the beach … but I have no particular desire to get any closer.

 

 

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