Shirley Temple

July 19, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

So, sometime last week I was texting back and forth with a friend - I had to bail on some plans we’d made and while apologizing, I made some sort of comment about buying him drinks to make up.  He replied back quickly, “Only if we drink together.” Not quite realizing I was on this teetotaling thing, I fired back saying “Deal!”.

Thirty seconds later when it occured to me that I couldnt drink, I followed up with a “No wait! I can’t drink, I’ll have to have a O’Douls or something like that!”

Its times like that that I wish I didn’t quit drinking. Getting together with a friend at some bar and just have a drink and some conversation.  Pretty much the whole point of social boozing.

Anyway, I made good on my promise - we got together at Bar Pilar.  He had a stoli and cranberry.  I said to him, I really didn’t want to drink O’Douls.  Drinking non-alcoholic beer is just… plain wrong.

I then remembered back when I was really young, my dad would sometimes “take the boys out” to give my mom a break.  Dad would get me and my brother strapped in the car and then head down to the local bar, called Jimmy’s.  He’d set me up with a shirley temple and give me some quarters to go play Donkey Kong or Ms. Pac-Man.  Once my brother and I finished up our drink and lost all the lives our quarters could buy us, it’d be time to go back home and to bed.

I told the bartender I wanted a shirley temple.  She looked first at my friend with an is-he-serious expression, before looking at me.  I nodded in affirmation.  She shrugs her shoulders, mixes up the drink and places it in front of me.

I took a sip.  And it tasted exactly the same as I remembered it almost twenty years ago.  I smiled and nodded as I saw myself, twenty years younger, running from the bar with drink in hand, quarters in the other for the Donkey Kong arcade game in the corner.

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