My Quest For Blackberry Lemonade

I'm a simple man, okay? I like my lemonade. Sometimes it's yellow, sometimes pink. Sometimes there's strawberry, sometimes not. No matter what, I'll drink it. I like my lemonade (so long as it isn't sugar free because you have to draw the line somewhere). Whenever I go to a movie theater, that's probably my go-to drink. I don't get it at work because KFC charges extra for lemonade over any other kind of beverage, so I usually just mix my drinks.

The thing about my town is that we're kind of small, but we have an area that has quite a few restaurants. It's kind of distanced from the rest of the town so that that kind of corporate interference doesn't mess with the family-owned businesses on Main Street, but my family does most of our shopping there instead because there's a chain supermarket called Meijer (which I think is mostly a Michigan/Midwest United States thing, like Tim Horton's. It's like Walmart). Now, at this Meijer, they have a Huntington bank in-store, which is my bank. I had to go there today to transfer some money from my checking account to my savings, as well as to withdraw $200 for an anime convention on Sunday and buy a Father's Day gift.

Before I left my house to do so, my mom asked where I was going, and I told her that I was going to Meijer, and then somewhere to get lunch (which I was going to bring home). I also offered to get milk for us, and she said that she'd like that.

I drove to the store on this very hot summer day, in a car with almost no AC, went to the bank, and finished everything there just fine. Then I got a cart, picked up two gallons of milk, some candy for me, a bigass Hershey's bar for Dad (he likes chocolate), and two packages of muffins (never shop while hungry). Before I went to the checkout, I called Mom to see if she wanted anything else, and she said no, but asked where I was going to eat. I told her that I was going to Wendy's, and she asked if I could get her a blackberry lemonade. I said yeah, and hung up. After that, I paid for it all with the only twenty dollar bill I had (didn't think I'd be buying so much stuff impulsively) and went to one of the fast food places, Wendy's, and ordered a Baconator combo (which I never get. I always get the Son of Baconator because it's cheaper) with a strawberry Fanta. After that, I asked if they had blackberry lemonade, and found that they didn't.

This is where my day started to go downhill.

I took my food and put my Fanta in the cupholder. The thing is, my cupholder is very flimsy and provides little to no support. I held one hand over my Fanta as I drove to McDonald's, because a blackberry lemonade sounds like it would be a McDonald's thing. I get there, and although they have two lanes for drive thru, both of them are filled. I decide to go inside instead, thinking it would be faster, and found there was only one family ahead of me. Unfortunately for me, this particular family was an annoying one, and took up even more time with just talking about where they would sit and not taking their receipt with their order number on it and getting the hell out of my way. Eventually, I got to the counter and asked for blackberry lemonade. The lady said they didn't have any, and looked around before saying she didn't think they had any lemonade. Whether or not that's true is anyone's guess, as I remember getting strawberry lemonade from McDonald's in the past, but I don't really eat there, so they could have changed it up.

I went to Burger King next, and as I sat behind two cars in the drive thru, I texted my girlfriend (who works at Burger King) and asked if they had blackberry lemonade. She didn't respond, and soon I got to the speaker. Burger King speakers must suck because the lady's voice kept glitching out and she couldn't understand me too well, but eventually I managed to learn that Burger King does not have blackberry lemonade, but they do have flavored tea. I'm not a quitter, so I said "thanks, but I'm going to go somewhere else".

"What? I didn't catch that." she asked as I pulled away. As I left, I got a text from my girlfriend telling me that, no, Burger King does not have blackberry lemonade.

After that, I pulled across the street to Arby's. At this point, I was getting tired and I was worried that the milk would spoil in the heat. The drive thru was packed, so I opted to go inside. I parked in what I hope wasn't the employee parking and hurried inside where there was only one other gentleman in line. He ordered and then it was my turn.

"Do you guys have blackberry lemonade?" I asked, probably sounding exasperated and hopeful.

"I'm sorry, we do not."

I looked down at the counter with a sigh, wondering if it was socially acceptable to bang my head on it a few times. After snapping out of my self reflection, I looked back at her and said, "Look, I know you guys probably don't like endorsing the competition, but I have been to about four different places so far because I promised to get my mom a blackberry lemonade. Do you know where I can go that has that?"

She thought for a second and then asked a customer who was waiting for her food (they must have been friends, or that customer was oddly calm), and she couldn't think of anywhere. The lady shrugged and said sorry, but she didn't. I took out my card and defeatedly asked what kind of lemonade they did have.

I guess that I must have looked really desperate, or some part of my sad tale had moved her, because the lady smiled at me, handed me a medium cup, and said, "Here, take it. It's on me."

"You are the best person," I said gratefully, taking the cup. "Thank you so much."

I went to the drink machine and began filling it with lemonade. After it was about half full, I wondered about mixing it with some other fruity flavor and finished filling it with fruit punch for her. It wasn't blackberry lemonade, but it would have to do. I capped the drink, grabbed a straw, and headed out, placing the lemonade mix next to my strawberry fanta in my cupholder.

I began speeding home so that the heat didn't ruin my groceries, but that's when it happened. The flimsy cupholder! I was nearly there, going around some curves, when suddenly both drinks toppled out. I screamed and tried to grab them, to no avail. I'm pretty sure I swerved into the oncoming lane and if there had been a car, I would have died. Fortunately, I survived, but strawberry fanta was spilled all over one side of my floor and lemonade-fruit punch was covering the other half. I drove home faster, hoping the puddles didn't soak in, and shut my car off and threw the door open when I arrived home. I decided to take the groceries inside first so that they wouldn't spoil while I cleaned my car, and found out that Dad's giant Hershey's bar actually melted in the heat to the point where it felt like pure chocolate liquid in the wrapper, so I stuck that in the freezer. Here's hoping that it's still good for Father's Day.

I spent the next half hour cleaning out my car. I think that the floor mats caught most of it, thank God, but I still had to do a bit of scrubbing and vacuuming. After that, I reheated my cold Baconator and dry fries and went downstairs to watch One Punch Man before going to the convention on Sunday and try to recover from the day I had just had.

In the end, I learned two things. Blackberry lemonade apparently does not exist and Mom would have been fine with really anything that I brought her, and I need to buy a new goddamn cup holder.