Sometimes I realize that i take drinking for granted.
Not that I’m a wild alcoholic who doesn’t know when enough is enough or anything like that.
I simply mean that drinking has become a normal part of my life, and I rarely stop to think about the dysfunction of it all. You see, I work for a small local craft brewery, and drinking is part of my job. I have to taste all of the brands we create, or else I won’t know how to promote them when I’m on the town. As such, I drink for free a lot. I always have access to free cans of beer in large quantities, and I rarely consider how abnormal this is. It’s not weird for me to have 48 cans of beer hanging out in my car… just like last night, when all 48 cans exploded. I genuinely forgot that I had the carbonated cans sitting in my back seat when I pulled up to my friend’s house and parked last night around 10pm. I didn’t consider the fact that it was excessively cold out that night, with an ambient temperature of 12 degrees and windchill of -20. I walked right into her toasty warm house and basked in the central heat that she had chugging along at 75 degrees. It was only when I walked back out into the freezing cold air outdoors that I realized I may have made a mistake. I suddenly remembered that it was subarctic temperatures outdoors and ran to my car. I arrived to find that every single free beer from my work had frozen in the cold air and exploded throughout the interior of my vehicle. I spent three hours scrubbing out the sticky mess in frigid cold conditions. So much for the perks of my job.