Retrospective of a Quarter-Lifer: Suicides
I’m twenty-three years old and no longer a child. Sure, I’m not old when compared to atom bombs, disco dancing, or Beta Max, but it should be noted that I am no longer a carefree youth. I know this statement to be true because the other day I found myself loitering in front of a soda fountain, agonizing over what sugary ichor would suit me best and also reminiscing over where the last twenty years had taken me – I could no longer buy video games at leisure because the same fifty dollars would provide me with one week’s worth of gas; my thousand dollar a month, minimum wage job – a sum that my younger self would have found grandiose – barely warded off the Chapter 11 cannibals; and my summer evenings weren’t spent at candy stores, in arcades, on trampolines, or anywhere else I damn well pleased because my employer has charged me with the responsibility of asking people, “Bad or no bag?” Yes, I am twenty-three and no longer a child, but that does not mean that I will not give into whimsical childish indulgences. And so, I found myself standing in front of the soda fountain, pouring a suicide to the disgust of the patron behind me.
A suicide is the potion created by adding all the elemnts of a soda machine into one cup. I’ve also heard them called corpse makers, graveyards, and zombies although I imagine many other equally creative names exist for the concoction (all, I’m assuming, ringing with tones of death and macabre). The majority of suicides are produced in a pizza parlors, on someone’s birthday, when the quarters have been milked from parent’s pockets and children pine for entertainment until the pizza arrives. At this time, someone dares the shyest or most gullible of the children to make a suicide. In accordance with the pizza parlor code of ethics, the child begrudgingly rises, pours one, and returns to the table to stare at his obsidian beverage. Without warning, the child tips the glass back and drains it with the speed and zeal of a fraternity initiate, before running back for a Mountain Dew chaser. On the plus side, he had won the venerability of his friends for at least a week – two if it’s an especially uneventful month. On the down side, his stomach will feel like it is trying to digest concentrated sin, and later that night he will vomit all over the kitchen floor (the color and viscosity of the inevitable vomit will make his mother wonder just what exactly they are serving children at that pizza parlor). For the record, my suicide tasted like licorice mixed with water from
I sipped on my drink the whole way home. At my house, I immediately poured the suicide down the drain and prepared myself a glass of iced tea. I’m twenty-three years old, after all.
posted by Kevin D. @ 5:20 PM
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