He who hesitates is lost. Then he pines away over his procrastination.
At the tender age of ten, I was thrown to the wolves. Actually, they were bears (of the Cub Scout variety). As my mother dropped me off at the day-camp that morning, I felt small and insignificant, my single-ness dwarfed by the mass of pint-sized humanity around me. My family had just moved into the area three weeks before, and I knew no one. It had the potential to be a very scary event, but I wasn’t afraid. In my small, sweaty palm, I clutched a brown paper bag. And in that brown paper bag was the ultimate weapon – a virtual self-esteem force field -- a can of Shasta root beer. As a boy, I had a fascination with packages. I always wanted to eat breakfast at the neighbor’s house because they got to have cold cereal instead of the same, old, boring pancakes we had every day. Pancakes. Waffles. Oatmeal. BLECH! The closest we ever got to cold cereal was homemade granola. And that was only distantly related (and only vaguely similar if you dumped a half-cup of sugar in your bowl). Yep. The neighbors had it good. Raisin Bran. Sugar Smacks. Kix. You name it, they ate it. So what does this have to do with a Cub Scout day-camp?Flash back to first grade . . . that fateful day when I walked into the lunch room and discovered that, not only did I have breakfast envy, but now lunch envy was in full bloom. Everyone ate hot lunch. Well, not everyone. There were a few others in the cold lunch crowd. But all those other cold-lunchers had some sort of packaged drink. Chilled cans of Welches. Gleaming packs of Capri-Sun. At the very least, a half-pint carton of milk. It was enough to make me want to hide my thermos. So a can of Shasta root beer was a huge event. I couldn’t wait until lunch! I was actually going to drink root beer! At long last, the time arrived. I grabbed my lunch bag and headed for the spot I had picked out earlier in the day – a lava rock in the middle of a dry creek bed by the camp. It was quiet, away from others; the perfect place to enjoy such a delicacy. With a surgeon's fingers I delicately unwrapped my first sandwich, laying the cellophane across my lap to catch the crumbs. I looked for a second at the can of root beer. The homemade bread and thick-sliced roast beef was going to make me thirsty, but the root beer would have to be last. I wanted to taste it all day long. I wasn't going to open it ‘til the end. I bit into the sandwich, and joy filled me. It was a beautiful scene. The sky was slightly clouded in a wondrous mixture of blue and grey. The shrubs along the bank were that florescent green of early spring. Birds sang, and in the distance, the other Webelos were scrambling and laughing. A smile spread across my face and soaked into my whole being. I took another bite and tried to choke down the dry bread. I wasn’t going to make it to the end. With a twinge of disappointment, I realized I needed to open the can. I decided it would be okay as long as I saved some for last. My very last swallow would have to be root beer. So I opened the can and reverently put my lips to the edge. The soft, brown liquid trickled down my parched little throat leaving a path of happiness. "Just a little," I thought. "Don't want to waste it." So I put it down next to me and went on with my lunch. From time to time, I took a sip of the sacred beverage, cherishing it like starving man eating cake. With two bites of my sandwich left (and about half of the root beer), I sat in my creek bed thinking, "This is it! I finally get to drink my root beer. It will be my last swallow, and the taste will stay with me all day. Every time I burp, I'll taste root beer. How beautiful!" I bit into the last scrap of sandwich just as two kids ran into my bend of the creek bed and kicked over the can. The roast beef suddenly got very tough, the sky seemed to be a whole lot more grey than blue, and the birds in those lovely green bushes seemed to choke on their melodious hymns. "Oops." And off they ran with a “Sorry” thrown carelessly over a shoulder. I stopped mid-chew, lips quivering, and watched my dreams soak into the dust. It was enough to make me want a Thermos. At least they have screw-on lids.
oh, how sad, it must have happened on a Tuesday (hee,hee....)and Shasta root beer, that's the best kind(except for homeade of course)...I love thermoses too but I always seem to leave them somewhere, or forget to screw it on all the way before picking it up again so it doesn't do me much good, except that I can save it since I usually don't finish in one sitting...
Ahna
Leo -- I love this memoir. Greedy dust!--You put your can of pearls in the hog-pen didn't you? Rootbeer always was a favorite of mine, too. Except when my mother made it from scratch, putting it outside the back door step in a glass, milk-gallon jug. After three days of "aging" it still just tasted like yeast. God bless the canned stuff! --Charlie
Reviewed by Ruth Rey
8/28/2007
Very, very touching, Leo. I can well imagine how you must have felt.
Sunniest,
Fractured Frazzled Folk Fables and Fairy Farces is adult literature that satirizes famous children's stories, fables and fairy tales. The work is Jay Dubya's twenty-first e-book available in Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook.
