Article 113155 of alt.peeves:
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From: djw8@cornell.edu (Daniel Wineman)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Ginger Ailing (or, Bad Day at the Bistro)
Date: 28 Dec 1996 12:19:53 GMT
Organization: Cornell University
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Some will remember December 27, 1996 as the day Christmas shopping
season mercifully began to breathe its last this year. Others will
remember it, if there is a God, as the day lime green turtlenecks
finally showed signs of going out of style. I, however, probably
won't remember yesterday at all, but if pressed, I might recall it
as the day I ordered a ginger ale at the Village Porch Bistro.

Now, I hadn't actually checked the menu to see if there was a list
from which the wary customer might choose his beverage, but the
waitress didn't bat an eye. I assumed I was in the clear to begin
requisitioning the more challenging aspects of my dinner.

The meal wasn't, on the whole, bad, or even particularly out of
the ordinary. There were some lumpy bits, but largely these were
the bits that were meant to be lumpy, and the few exceptions were
not lumpy enough to merit complaint. It was, as the astute reader
has no doubt guessed, the beverage which perplexed me.

It wasn't lumpy. Leaving out the ice cubes, there wasn't anything
even slightly nonliquid about the drink, which was of course fine.
If it had been less than entirely the wrong color, I would have
had no cause for alarm. Ginger ale is perhaps the beigest of
beverages, not counting Bailey's Irish Cream or the odd mocha
shake, and the medium brown liquid which taunted me from within
its frosted translucent plastic vessel was further from being
beige than... well, than two very far apart things are from one
another. It looked, albeit in the least unappealing way possible,
like diluted sewage.

Apprehensive, I lifted the glass and sniffed at the contents. No
clues there. After conducting a battery of highly scientific yet
appallingly inconclusive tests, which consisted of holding the
glass to the light and tapping on the side to dislodge bubbles,
I screwed up my courage and tasted the fucker.

It wasn't bad. It wasn't good, but it didn't kill me or eat
through any internal organs. It tasted like watery, sugary Coke,
and I hate Coke, so (rather than settling for a known "safe"
beverage I merely hated for fear of trading it in for something
that might actually render me sterile) in the spirit of the true
Consumer, I called the waitress over to complain that this was
Not What I Had Ordered.

"Um, is this ginger ale?" I asked, as politely as possible.

"Well," she began, running a glittered fingernail through her
gel-encrusted curls, "we don't, like, have ginger ale. We have to,
like, make it ourselves by, you know--"

I interrupt her narrative at this point to allow those readers
who may have just sipped a beverage of their own calmly to
swallow, close their eyes, and count to ten before proceeding.
This procedure is recommended by the A.M.A. to protect the nasal
passages from a particularly embarrassing condition known as
"snarfing." Ready? Here goes:

"--mixing Sprite and Coke together."

There are situations growing up in suburban America prepares you
for. In ninety-nine encounters out of a hundred, you find yourself
subconsciously following a script. Very little surprises people
past the age of twenty or so, and that's one reason there are so
many suicides and so few good sitcoms. Most of the situations we
find ourselves in day to day are just reenactments of things that
have happened to us before.

This was not one of those situations. I was flabbergasted. My jaw,
literally, dropped. I don't suppose I would have been more
nonplussed if the waitress had sung the national anthem, stuck a
flag in my arse, and proclaimed herself empress of my sphincter.

Peeve: I forgot to ask if she was a chemistry major.
But then, some things are best left to speculation.

- Dan