Dear Rachel Dratch,
With all this new year business, lately I have been thinking about things that went down in the past decade. There are all kinds of things that trigger memories of the past. Sometimes we have very specific sense memories that do not quite live up to how our brains originally processed them.
When I first started working for this company, I fell in love with this tuxedo shirt. I thought it was awesome, and that if I were to wear it that it would be my glass slipper. It was always a little out of my price range so I never bought it. And then it made another appearance this fall. I debated and debated. "Do I really need this? Where will I wear it? How will I wear it?" I mean, it's a tuxedo shirt, and I don't exactly go anywhere where a tux is required. But the memory I had of it, that of it being awesome and that it would make me awesome, was enough to make me buy it.
I brought the shirt home and, man, was I excited. Ben was not so much. "So where are you going to wear this?" "Uh. I don't know, I thought you could wear it to that wedding you have to go to." "But I don't think it's black tie, and that tux shirt doesn't really look good with a regular suit." What he said was true. And then I felt the pang of regret, feeling like I had given into the horrible monster that pops up when you buy weird things that don't necessarily make sense but you still want them so you buy them. I had no idea why I wanted this shirt, other than that I had wanted it real bad a few years ago. Now that I got it, what am I going to do about it? I returned it.
It turns out that this same shirt would later be sold to me at a much deeper discounted rate because it had coffee stains across the back. I could swing buying it that way, and even if I only wore it once I could justify it. But this all makes me think about how we remember things.
Last night we went to a birthday party for one of my bosses. It was at this club downtown. I hadn't been to this place since I was an undergrad, and even then I only went twice. My boss said it was under new management, so it was totally different and would be a great time. So we went. I had mentioned before to Ben that the club's signature drink was delicious. We love a good cocktail, and I was convinced that this one would please. I need to make it known that the last time I had one of these was after drinking a rum and coke and then a Long Island Iced Tea, so I'm not sure exactly what I remember tasting other than that it reminded me of fruit punch and that it was good.
I may or may not have been hyping this drink since we moved back to our town. I really remember thinking this drink was out of this world, and may be worth the trip to this club. And since we had to go there for this party, the opportunity to finally taste this thing again left me feeling excited.
We get there, say hello, and then move to the bar. I didn't think the drink would be in a 24 ounce cup because I saw that my friend's drink was in a much smaller and manageable size. I only wanted to stay for a little while, so this size seemed like it made sense. But the bartender grabbed the huge cups and proceeded to get busy. I don't know what goes into these things, but I think it involves five or six different liquors and Miller High Life. I will drink a High Life on its own, so I am not judging. I don't know where the fruit punch flavor comes from because instead of watching the bartender making the drink, I was making sure Ben was ready for the ride of his life.
Like the tux shirt, this drink didn't exactly live up to how I remembered it. It was incredibly sweet, and I swore off Smirnoff Ice years ago. The fruit punch flavor was definitely there, but none of it was in the same way that I remembered it from college. It wasn't wholly bad, but it was not particularly good. And it took a little while to drink because the cup was so huge. And we each got one! It was funny to be drinking it, and having those weird memories of being in this place and the bizarre couple of times I had had when I was there. And then we laughed because, clearly, how I remembered it and how we were experiencing it then were two very different things.
All of this is to say that tux shirts and funky cocktails may not be what they once were. It was fun to enjoy them then, and probably even more hilarious to "enjoy" them now. I feel like I'm being all nostalgic, like there is some sort of message or fable-style takeaway from all of this. If there was, it may just be that the past is awesome and sometimes we can take those memories we, for some reason or another, place way high up down a few notches. Sometimes the gag reflex you experience when drinking that drink from undergrad is enough to make you appreciate what you've got right now. And it is also enough to make you just order a water.
Jon
