Class and Privilege in the Consumption of Liquids

I am not an alcohol drinker. 

I decided long ago that I would rather get my calories from food and my friends supported that decision since they needed someone sober to drive them home from the bars.   I have never felt like my friends or even newly met acquaintances felt any less of me for not imbibing although I did feel pity for my partner, a good German who enjoys wine and drink, because she always had to enjoy alcohol solo.  Her friends and family, including my own sister, have luckily filled in for me.   

However, it makes me unhappy that we non-drinkers are so discriminated against in the bars and establishments.  When we order drinks anywhere, while my friends drink wine from nice glass glasses, I am always given water and soda in a plastic cup.  I don’t like eating from plastic plates, using plastic utensils and I sure don’t like drinking from plastic cups. 

 

 

When I brought this discrimination to the attention of my social group last week at a bar in town, while sipping my soda from a plastic cup, they were disbelieving.  Like I was making it up, although there I sat with the proof at my lips.   One of them asked her husband, another non-alcohol consumer, if this was the case and his reply was “Sure it is!”  He is always upbeat.    I restated my case, and then called the waitress over and asked her if they always served the sodas and water in plastic cups and she said “hmmm, I guess we do.”  I am not sure if there is a sense that people buying sodas and water don’t pay for the place so why waste good glass on bad drinkers, or if it is a policy of such places that people drinking water or soda must be too young to drink a “real man’s drink” and therefore are too young to play with glass.

Anyway, it is a discrimination which I think we need to remove from our entertainment scape.  No one wants to drink wine out of a stupid plastic wine glass so why should I have to drink my beverage for a stupid plastic glass.

 

I always ask for a soda, in a glass glass, with ice.  Maybe we should stop serving kids drinks in plastic cups and adults drinks in glass containers.  Maybe we should stop calling them “Adult Beverages”.  Then maybe kids wouldn’t think it was cooler to drink wine than koolaid.   As for me, I shall drink Kool-Aid, but I shall have it in a glass glass.  Give me glass or give me death.