A Parting Gift...

One summer day in 2008, I was working in the garage of our old house, when a woman in a beat-up early 90’s Honda Civic pulled up to my neighbor. She was kind of dressed up and was pulling things out of her car and taking them into the neighbor’s house. It turns out the neighbor was hosting a birthday party that night, and this girl was from a wine company and was delivering all of the alcohol for the party. Later on, people started to show up to the party, and she got ready to take off, after having delivered the wine, but realized she locked the keys in the car.

I tried to help, as did members of the party, despite her stating, “This always happens, but I usually just pull hard enough and it opens.” This time it did not. I also sat there wondering how often this girl locked her keys in the car.

Well I went inside, grabbed a wire hanger, and after some bending and prying, I was able to unlock the car for her. She was very happy, and figuring she was from some wine company, she might have a little extra to give me.

So I jokingly said to her, “How about a little something, you know, for the effort?” (Those might not have been my exact words, but some people might know where that line is from).

She responded with, “I delivered all of our wine, but here is a bottle of something I just picked up at the grocery store”

With that, she handed me a bottle of Barefoot White Zinfandel, arguably, the cheapest bottle at CVS (maybe $3.99), and potentially the one that might give you the worst hangover. At that point, I could not say NO, so I just smiled and thanked her, and ran inside laughing.

Well fast-forward some 16 months or so, and the bottle was still hanging around the house. I could not bring myself to give that to someone as a gift, and I was not going to simply throw it away. Not knowing what I could do with it, I came up with the perfect solution. I left it in the fridge of the person we sold the house to.

Enjoy your hangover!