Spinning Around, I've Got This Funny Feeling, Turning My Whole World Upside Down

--"Spinnin' Around", Jump 5

When we are St. Rita's my mother never packed us tiny, little juiceboxes with our lunches. Nope, for her sons she always packed that good 'ole pouch of Capri Sun. Orange, punch, &c...--we must have ran through each and every flavor they offered at Albertson's by the time we were done with school. That in and of itself isn't anything of note; plenty of my classmates drank Capri Sun. What was weird about the fact I had it at practically every lunch was the way in which I carried and drank it. For whatever reason I would not carry those things right side up. As soon as it was out of the brown lunch bag I would hold it with the flat side towards my face. Then, when it came time to punch the straw into it, I would always poke it through the now-exposed bottom of the pouch. Ostensibly this was because I thought all the sugar had settled into the bottom during transport, but in reality it was just a ploy to be different.

This led to all sorts of situations that people who followed directions never had to run into. For instance, I couldn't just set my Capri Sun down. I had to lean it up against something if I wanted it to stay upright. Also, as I drank it, I would always have to adjust the straw shorter since the fat end of the pouch was closer to the entry hole. Lastly, it was impossible to put it back in my bag to save for later. Whereas other people had the luxury of positioning their drinks upright in their bags when they placed them back in their cubby holes, sadly, my drink would never survive such a positioning and would have probably leaked over everything.

I didn't care. I was a man of ritual and that was my daily ritual.


because you keep me spinning all around

The thing is this one ritual that seems to have followed me into adulthood. It's become one of my rules, so to speak. Now whenever I hold a canned or bottled beverage to carry somewhere, be it the table or just to the couch, I inevitably flip it upside down in my hand. That's what you get after eight years of holding my drinks the wrong way; it's somehow imprinted in my brain that that's the natural way to hold drinks. One only has to take a look at me buying my prerequisite root beer from the break room at work and carrying it upside-down to my desk to see that I'm still adhering to the principle that all the sugar is at the bottom of the drink to this day.

Actually, I believe part of the reason this habit has continued is that I've found it's so much easier to stack stuff when the can's upside-down. For example, a can of root beer costs fifty-five cents at work. Say I borrow a dollar from somebody, rather than stick their change in my pocket, which I'm going to have dig out again, I just stick the change in the concave portion of the can's underbelly. Or say I'm drinking Coronas on Casey and Laurel's porch. Rather than try to juggle the limes to the table out there, I've found the bottom of bottle works just dandy in keeping those errant limes in line. See what you can do when you have a different grasp of things?

I'm not an innovator. In the history of time I'm sure there's been one person who has made a point of holding his or her drinks the wrong way. But I do think, of the people I know, no one else goes to the extreme of attempting to do things differently than I do. Hell, I still get crap about signing off my business letters "Yours Swimmingly". I do things because they make sense to me, because initially I had some reason for doing something that got stuck in my brain. It's why I do things in eights (because my Boy Scout buddy told me I must like that number after cutting my pancakes into eights and leaving an eighth of the yolk runny on my scrambled eggs). It's why I put two straws into my drinks when I can (because you never know when somebody is going to want to share with you or, as Mitch once said, in case one breaks down). And it's why I have a dozen more rules when it comes to living my life. If I wanted to get the same results as everyone else, I would make the same choices as everyone else. I would fall into the same habits as everyone else. But, because I pride myself on my uniqueness, I try to break from the norm in as many ways as possible.

It's not the same as rebelling or doing the opposite of everyone. Hell, I'm not about to get pierced or tatted up just to separate myself from the herd. It's about having an idea and going with it without giving a thought whether or not it'll shock somebody. The point isn't to aggravate or annoy or shock; the point is to do what I want without ever thinking about how somebody else will react. It's about what Rachel said once long ago:

Right is right even if no one does it, and wrong is wrong even if everyone does it.

And the only person who ever decides what's right for me is me. That's why I'm going to continue to hold my drinks upside-down, because at the end of the day my holding a bottle the wrong way isn't going to kill you and it's not going to bother you to the point of distraction. At least it shouldn't. I'm going to continue this peculiarity of mine because at the end of the day the only person who's going to be affected by my choices is going to be me, the only person who's going to be drinking from my bottle (or can or pouch) is going to be me.

Hold your Capri Sun however you want and just let me do the same.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers