So, straw wrappers are going to eventually get me into trouble.
See, someone, probably Jerry, taught me years ago about blowing a wrapper across the room. This lesson was learned after getting said wrappers often blown into my face at unexpected moments, not that I shouldn't have at least some clue after the fourth, fifth, even eighth time. We'd open our 59-79-99 Taco Bell meals and here one would go, sailing right up in my face.
Off to college I went, and I learned the secrets of the trade. An evening sitting in the 4th Street Sonic while a friend was working, perched on a stool inside the doorway, pressed hard against the wall every time a carhop went sailing out, I watched and learned. She too knew of the trick, and found the best way to prevent getting a wrapper blown into her face was to pinch the condensation on the front of one of the shake machines, then gently pinch the ends of the straws she was about to deliver, applying just enough dampness to lightly adhere the papers to the plastic beneath, just enough so when a guy taking that combo into the car and grasping the proffered straw from said carhop, quickly twisting off the paper on one end of the straw, would blow through the other paper endpiece in frustration rather than have it land daintily or even forcefully where he had aimed it. Thus, many a cleavage was spared the indignity of the paper missile, breath-propelled, and its unwanted entry.
Indeed, I picked it up as first a party trick, betting friends at gatherings at local institutions of fast food where straws came wrapped in paper on how far we could "shoot" our wrappers, knowing to dampen my finger in condensation before grabbing the straw I'd hand to them. This afforded me no additional friendships, but did wow the kids I challenged, and became a bit of a dad joke or talent.
I would go on, of course, to have a kid of my own. And yes, by the time Hunter could talk, I was doing it again, this time with a captive participant. We would go to a drive-thru, and when those drinks were handed out and the straws delivered, I would quietly tear the paper from the end of the straw, aim it across the tip of my kid's nose, and let fly. Laughter usually ensued, and Hunter would try to replicate my efforts. I didn't bother to wet or dampen the end; I wanted my child to figure out the secret.
It happened one day when Hunter was eight. I had passed over the drink and the straw while sitting at a Sonic, scrolling through my phone, checking my email. A quick zip in the air, and I caught the edge of the end of the straw passing right in front of my eyes. The dawn had come.
It became a challenge. We'd get our beverages, whether seated in a car or side-by-side at a Waffle House, or across from each other in a restaurant at a booth, maybe a table. Hunter quickly learned not to touch a drink before tearing the paper, especially when the drinks were in glasses. Wait staff would catch us, giggling madly at each other. A woman working at Chuy's once caught Hunter aiming and made the kid go pick up the wrapper where it had flown.
My progeny has become quite adept at making that paper wrapper fly, knowing the most startling place to aim is not directly at the opposite party but along the profile between the nose and brow, just inside the scoop of the eye socket, never touching, always streaking through the view. When we happen to dine together these days, we both know to watch for the other - and for waiters - and do our best to catch each other off-guard.
Yet I do find myself often riding solo, out and about in whatever direction from home my work has taken me. I will keep a brown paper bag in the passenger floorboard and, when I skid through a drive-thru, grabbing a beverage on my way hither and non, I still tear the end and blow the wrapper, aiming for the sack in the floorboard. I hit it more times than not.
But sometimes, when I'm weary from hours on the road, or the hour is late, or really early, I can make mistakes. I find myself seeking the company of coffee, another of those miracle contrivances that sets me right as rain. I know all the black coffee tricks, like if you order a large cup of ice at Sonic, it will perfectly fit a hot regular black coffee with no room to spare, and that even an ice cold cup of water can be enough to bring you to a better sense of alertness in an instant, particularly when paired with Cinnamon Mentos.
That gap in reason before the caffeine hits, before the cold invigorates the bloodstream, that gap can be the difference between victory and defeat. As it was, of recent memory, I ventured through the drive-thru at a Wendy's, taking advantage of their two for three special with the egg and cheese English muffins. Usually it's hot coffee I choose, but this morning I ached for something sweet, so a Coke Zero was on my mind.
I awaited my turn in the drive-thru line, trying to grasp what the announcers on the radio were conversing about, wondering if Coke Zero would be enough to get me down the road to my next appearance. The car ahead of me pulled out, I pulled in, and the sweet older lady at the window handed me the beverage and straw.
She turned, ever so briefly, to ask if my order was ready. Usually it's not an instant ready-to-go situation with the egg and cheese English muffins, because most people want theirs with bacon or sausage. They have to make them fresh, because you can't get away with just pulling the bacon off a sandwich, there's too much risk of cross-contamination and, after all, bacon is relatively expensive per the ounce. She handed out my cold beverage, and I sat it in the center console, my fingers quickly pressing around the entirety of the lid in a circle, making sure every edge was sealed, a sign of a woman who has taken way more than her share of meals in the car.
The hostess at the window shook an empty bag, dropping napkins inside it and saying something to the cook just beyond my point of view. I twisted and tore the paper from the end of the straw, looked down the barrel the plastic made, and aimed it at the brown paper sack on the passenger's side floorboard.
I heard from the back, "we're out of English muffins. Could we do a biscuit?"
The sweet older woman at the window turned to ask me the question, which I had already heard and prepared to answer in the affirmative. I was easy. It wasn't that big a deal to sub out a biscuit for that English muffin, this one time.
But my words were wrapped around the cloudiness in my yet to focus mental state. What came out was not a response, but the simple instinct that came with the plastic of that straw pressed between my lips, that decision never made but organically conjured, not to answer, but to blow.
The wrapper sailed free from the end of the straw, arching high and quick out the window, over the car sill, over the drive-thru window sill, a perfect misintended shot, not quite this "miss" intended but indeed subconsciously plotted in a way I had not cleared with my mental synapses, across the space between and directly between her eyes.
This older lady, perhaps worn down by time and the hum of the fountain dispenser behind her, who had heard and half-heard muttered utterings from drivers both drowsy and drunk, clear-headed and focused, passing through on their way to their places that day in the world, barely passed a blink. Perhaps before this time, she had been a captain of industry with steel in her veins. Perhaps she had spent time negotiating for hostage releases. Perhaps, and I suspect this is most likely, she had endured decades in the public school system, building a thickened skin and a talent for ensuring each errant student who had openly mocked her or disrupted her class, met their intended fate of a lowered grade or humiliation before their classmates.
Whatever her background had been, she leaned forward, the top of her head in its ball-capped splendor, over towards me with a tired but firm voice.
"Ma'am, you need to pull up to the next door for your order."
At that very moment, I was an eight year old child being punished for my first and only time being caught by the substitute teacher with a straw in my hand, as if I had blown a spitball through its hollow, with the dread of the principal's office looming in my head. I hastily muttered an apology and hit the gas, not squealing my tires but decidedly departing the premises swiftly, Coke Zero in the center console, the now naked straw between my fingers as I rolled away in my shame.
It was a good thirty minutes before I realized I had left without my breakfast. And to date, I haven't returned, my embarrassment over what I did still strong in my thoughts. No Coke Zeros for me; the beverages I have chosen to consume on the road have, for the most part, been hot black coffee, which no straw should ever see.
That is, until this very night, when my kid and I hit a Taco Bell for a quick meal that will likely bring my disappointment in my own gastronomic choices to light before the evening is done. I realized, moments after the drinks were handed out to us, a fraction of a second after I had torn and twisted the wrapper on my straw, the moment the paper was in the air, that I would never look at this activity without the shame of the perfect strike, between the eyes, I had wrought that one morning, surfacing once again.
