Grape Juice

A little story, just for you.

When I was but a young lad of 8 or so, I was sent off to sleep-away camp in upstate NY. My second year of being sent to what I lovingly called ‘kiddie-prison’ I was introduced to a special ritual that had been passed down through the years, from camper to camper, until it finally reached my good friend David. Now David, it must be pointed out, was a good friend in the same way that Hannibal Lector was a good chef.

Meaning, they both scared the bejeebies out of me.

The method by which a Neanderthal like David managed to find the brain cells necessary to recall this ritual is of such astounding scientific importance that even now, decades after the event, some of our government’s greatest minds are attempting to discover it in the hopes of it leading to a cure for Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately for the Alzheimer sufferers of the world, at present the leading theory is, and I quote;

“Sometimes, even stupid gets lucky.”

Anywaste, back to our story. One fine day, David and his cronies managed to corner me outside of the main eating establishment of the camp, which was known far and wide as the “Mess Hall”. This building was called that due to its almost supernatural ability to cause all who passed through its doorway to become violently ill within 3 hours and empty their stomachs all over its floors, tables, chairs, walls and, in at least one case that I witnessed with my own eyes the year before, the rafters in the ceiling. The truly astonishing part was that the person who hit the ceiling for some odd reason actually stood up in their chair to do it.

And it was a 10 year old girl.

On the beautiful day at camp that I have been talking about now for about an hour, David, who liked to lovingly refer to me as, “Shrimp-Nerd”, cornered me outside the mess hall and thrust a plastic cup filled with fluid into my hands. This caused me pause for two reasons; first, when a timid, shy and tiny mouse is cornered by a giant, angry and menacing cat the very last thing the mouse would expect the cat to do is hand him a drink and invite him to dinner.

Secondly, the liquid was black.

I’m not talking brown and fuzzy, like a cola or root beer. I’m talking deep, deep, dark black. Like distilled midnight, or death’s blood, or liquid evil. It was a dark color the kind of which nightmares are made of and, not to put to fine a point on it, just by the look on David’s face I deduced that drinking the contents of that plastic cup would be Bad.

“Hey, Shrimp-Nerd. See what a good friend I am? I went and got you some grape juice to drink on such a hot day like today.”
“Gee, David. You shouldn’t have.”
“But I did, Shrimp-Nerd. And since I was so nice, you wouldn’t wanna make me mad and not drink it, would you?”
“Heaven forbid.”
“So?”
“So?”
“Ain’t you going to drink it?”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now.” [knuckles cracking]
“Oh. Uhm, ok…”

Have you ever eaten or drunk something that you thought was tasty only to realize after it was in your mouth that it was something so horrible that Satan himself had a patent on it for use in Hell’s Kitchen? You know, like when you drink some milk only to discover that it has the texture of cottage cheese? Or when you think you’re eating a piece of delicious bread pudding only to realize afterwards that it was actually week-old mayo that had been sitting in the sun?

Oh yeah, you’re all with me now.

Well, as I brought that tiny plastic cup of demon-diarrhea to my lips I knew it would be bad, I just didn’t know how bad until that viscous liquid made its initial assault on my poor, defenseless tongue. David and his crew had never laughed so hard and for the next two weeks anytime they saw me they would ask if I needed a drink. And every time they did my eyes would fill with tears and my body would convulse as I began to dry-heave for the next hour or so at just the thought of what I could only imagine was the irreparable damage I had done to my gastrointestinal tract. And what was the disgusting liquid I had been forced to ingest? A mixture of salt, soy sauce, vinegar, coffee, chocolate syrup and, of all things, ground red pepper.

And to this day, grape juice still makes me gag.