Ice Milk
If there is one truth in which a hat can be hung, it is that things just don’t always turn out with typical expected results. I find this to be especially true as it applies to the written word. I’m not making any value judgments regarding the ability of folks to comprehend the written word, in fact, I’m not really sure of a basic theme to my line of thought here. I’m merely suggesting that I fear that human communication is suffering due to texting, messaging, chatting, or whatever means is popular on any given day. Often, I find myself reading a sentence wrong after a quick scan, or having to read something more than once in order to find assurance that I’m catching the meaning. I’m also not saying that I possess more than average aptitude in this area. I’m only submitting that by being a writer, I probably am a little more adept in reading and writing comprehension, if only because I currently do more of it than the average person out there.
On Saturday night, in the neighborhood of 7:30 PM, I posted a picture to Facebook of the glass of milk that I was drinking. Along with the picture, I posted the following narrative: “What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen a man drink a glass of milk before?”
In retrospect, there wasn’t a lot of forethought that went into the post. I was sitting in my normal barstool on a Saturday night in the One-Man-Think-Tank, and suddenly felt a craving for a large glass of milk. I sat my glass down on the bar, complete with a single extra-large barroom ice cube. Immediately seeing what I felt was the obvious irony of the glass before me, I grabbed my phone, snapped a quick picture, and chuckled to myself as I posted it to Facebook and awaited responses.
I didn’t have to wait long before responses began to come, but the responses were almost unanimously offered toward my choice to drink milk with ice in it. I haven’t always been a drinker of milk. I recall as a child watching my Uncle Bob fix himself a glass of milk and adding ice, and I thought it was as gross of a combination as existed. Then came the mornings at breakfast with my friends the Harvey boys who lived on a dairy farm and I remember a stainless steel pitcher with milk fresh from the barn, and no ice was needed because it was as cold as it could get without being partially frozen. From that point forward, I had to have my milk cold.
But after an hour or so, I interpreted the pattern of responses and added that I found it strange for people who knew me well from my Facebook post or by personal acquaintance, to be caught up on the fact that I drank milk with ice. This opposed to the fact that it was a Saturday night and I was drinking milk instead of bourbon.
The Facebook post just so happened to occur at a time when I am on a hiatus from the brown liquors. My post about milk was supposed to be the irony. That I occupied my normal stool on a Saturday night and did not have 3 fingers of bourbon in front of me, that’s ironic. But consider it a shoot and a miss. There were 3 basic responses to the post, well, really 2, then the 3rd being the one I expected. So the first and most prevalent response was that it seems that the majority of my Facebook followers prefer their milk with ice in it. The second line of responses was from those who, to various degrees, disliked the notion of mixing ice and milk. The third type of response was closer to, but not quite what I expected, not totally. This being that followers were assuming that it was a white-colored cocktail of some sort along the lines of a White Russian. This too was interesting and maybe a little ironic to me because I’m sure that everyone knows that I drink bourbon, neat, and at room temp.
If all of this seems like a lot of words about nothing, you may be correct, I am not sure. I will say that what started as a quick tongue-in-cheek exercise in ironic expression, was simultaneously a success and a failure. Yes, it failed from the respect of my first thought that people would wonder why DBeazy was drinking milk instead of bourbon, and on a Saturday night, do doubt. But in the end, I guess the irony lies within myself.
You see, I am generally unashamedly gossamer when it comes to my lifestyle, especially when it comes to my partaking of the alcoholic beverage. I love it period, and I make no apologies for it. But as I mentioned all of this occurred during a period when I was refraining from the brown liquor. While I may be transparent about it, I understand that ANYTHING can become master of a person, especially alcohol, and I am cautious of that. Certain people who are really close to me know that from time-to-time, I take a break from the dark liquor. I do this if for no other reason, to satisfy myself that I am not governed by a drink, not governed by some external stimuli. In other words, I refuse to allow anything to have dominion over my life or my actions.
So what if anything did I learn from my milk post? Where was the irony? The irony I found was that I guess I just assumed that many people see me one way, and possibly they do, and were just being polite. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard, maybe I should give myself a little credit, and maybe, just maybe, people have better opinions of old DBeazy than I think. That’s ironic.