Gargle in Health, Bubbela

I don't know anything about wine.

Actually, I couldn't even drink wine for years because of a traumatic young adult experience involving nail polish remover. You see, my grandmother was always in the habit of giving me a variety of useful but sort of thoughtless gifts including but not limited to:

1. floss
2. paper bags
3. pens
4. mouthwash

*** I want to just point out that she would also give me wonderfully thoughtful things too. It was just a funny mix. Anyway...

So one day I was over at her condo and she presented me with this sort of Old-Lady brand of mouthwash. It didn't come in a jacked-up, vaguely muscular bottle, you know, like the way Listerine does. Nor was it a crazy LOUD color to indicate cleanliness. Instead it was in this sort of frosty, tear drop shaped bottle with an off-white screw on top. "You should gargle at least once a day," she instructed me between bites of white fish and bagels. "Thanks, Nana."

I took the mouthwash home and pretty much forgot about it. To this day, I have no idea where I put it. What I do remember is that a few weeks later I was brushing my teeth before bedtime and I thought to myself, "Oh! I shall be such a dutiful granddaughter tonight if I use that mouthwash my kindhearted Nana gave me last month!" And thinking pleasant thoughts, I grabbed the nearby teardrop shaped bottle that was sort of frosted over and poured the liquid into the cap.

"Oh Nana," I thought as I poured, "you buy such weird mouthwash. This cap is so small. Barely big enough for a gulpful of this of this wonderful mouthwash you bought me!" And without a second thought, I knocked it back.

And then I entered a world of pain.

For yous see, it wasn't mouthwash at all but, in fact, Harmon's brand Nail Polish Remover that I was sloshing around my mouth. If you want to know what it felt like, imagine that your mouth is suddenly supporting a small liquid deposit of hatred. If you don’t want to know what it felt like, pretend you never read that.

Then I spit it out so I’m not blind or anything.

So for many years after this event, I couldn’t drink wine, ESPECIALLY white wine because it was just too familiar in that OH MY GOD I HAD THIS TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE type of way.

But! Now I drink wine with increasing regularity though I don’t know much about it. I really like White Zinfandel but I’m told that this is an extremely lame and immature thing to drink. Still, it tastes good to me, so I drink rosés a lot.

Sorry,

Mackenzie