25 Days of Drinkin'

I generally consider myself a fairly terrible gift-giver.  It's not that I give bad gifts necessarily (except for that one Snuggie I bought Alex.  Sorry, Alex), as much as I just don't give any gifts.  For the last several weddings I've been to? I'm somewhat confident I showed up gift-less.  Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews? Nah.  In fact, I don't give them birthday gifts either.  Friends' birthdays? Um, I typically send cards.  I know, that makes me sound like a total Scrooge. It's not that I'm anti-gifts, as much as I just don't think about it. It's not instinctive for me. (Okay, okay, maybe there is a small part of me that is anti-gifts on occasion.) I'm always amazed by people who are excellent gift-givers.  My mom is one of those people.  My friend Alex is another.  Jill, too.  They'll find things and I'll think, "I don't know that I could have picked out a better gift for me if I had bought it for myself."  When I get really stellar gifts from other people, I always feel like such a slouch because I just don't have a strong track record.  Here's my defense for my poor gift-giving skills, though:

• I hate giving gifts out of obligation or tradition.  I'm not interested in buying gifts for the sake of buying gifts.  Those kind of gifts feel pointless to me.  
• I hate giving meaningless gifts.  If I'm going to give somebody something, I want it to have personal significance, purpose or value, not just some random item.
• I'd rather give the gift of experience rather than the gift of "stuff."  I want to buy time with people and memories, not more useless things to fill their homes and collect dust.

But every once in a blue moon, I go out in a gift-giving blaze of glory.  I get struck by a bolt of brilliance and find the perfect gift.  This happens only about once every three years, but when it does - I am golden.  That surprise 40th birthday party for my friend?  Knocked it out of the park (at least I think I did?) And that miniature replica I had made of my parents' house?  Nailed it.  My mom carted the thing around in her purse for days, showing it off.  And the donkey piñata I mailed to my friend Erica?  One for the ages.  Her and her husband were dressing up as Mary and Joseph for Halloween, so I mailed her a donkey to complete the look.  I nicknamed him Hey-Soos. (Get it? It's the pseudo-phonetic spelling of Jesus.  I know, probably a little sacrilegious, but I thought the whole thing was genius.  You can't have Mary and Joseph without a donkey.  And you really can just slap some postage on a piñata and mail it as-is. No need to put it in a box.)

But those are about the only example of brilliant gifts I can think of in my 33-years of existence, which is either a sad commentary on my memory or a sad commentary on my gift-giving abilities.  For the sake of this conversation, we'll go with the latter.

Since I hadn't had a flash of brilliance in awhile, I was due for one.

It has become a bit of a running joke in my family how my dad frequently stands in front of the refrigerator, doors wide open, looking for something to drink, contemplating the options.  "I don't want pop.  Too much sugar."  "I'm tired of drinking unsweetened tea."  "Water is boring."  He usually closes the doors, quietly lamenting, his thirst still not quenched. [Insert #firstworldproblem.]

I decided to solve his problem.

The week after Thanksgiving, my niece and I set off on an adventure to buy my dad 25 different kinds of drinks, one for each day of December.  We only had to stop at two locations to complete the task: World Market and Giant Eagle.  Who knew the average grocery store and specialty store could boast such a random assortment of drinks.  We basically pulled off the shelves the most off-the-wall options we could spot.  The weirder it sounded, the faster we scooped it up and put in our cart (all non-alcoholic, of course). I bought one bottle of each drink, figuring if one was truly atrocious, he wouldn't have to suffer through an entire 6-pack or 2-liter bottle, and instead just had to finish 8-12 ounces of each.  I arranged them in somewhat of an intentional order, trying to balance carbonated drinks with juice drinks.  On the outside of each of them, I wrapped my own label, sort of a commentary on each selection.  Then, each day, I put the day's bottle in the fridge, front and center.

We kicked it off on December 1 with a drink called "Dandelion Burdock."  My dad was mildly unimpressed.  Day 2 consisted of Blume Honey Water, Blueberry.  Also not a real winner.  Along came Prickly Pear, Ginger Kombucha, Cock'n Bull Ginger Beer, Pomegranate Maple Water, Mamma Chia, Thai Tea, Cucumber Sparkling Soda, Rose Lemonade, Matcha, and Lemon Cayenne Drinking Vinegar.  None of which got a thumbs up, let alone two.

But Days 7, 11 and 19?  Real doozies.  In the words of my father:              
             

Day 7, 1915 Organic Cold-Pressed Apple, Romaine, Cucumber, Spinach, Kale, Lemon Juice = "It's like drinking a bale of hay."  He took one sip of this and then promptly poured it down the drain. (You have to realize something - my dad has a stomach of steel.  So you know it's real bad if even my dad isn't willing to finish drinking it.)

Day 11, Alo Exposed Original + Honey (Aloe Vera Juice Drink) = "This is nasty.  I don't know how anybody drinks this garbage.  I sure don't need bits of aloe floating in my drink."  He may have used a different word for "garbage," but we'll keep it family-friendly.  I think he also poured this one down the drain.  

Day 19, Sparkling Jasmine Essence Water = "I'm pretty sure that's just a straight-up bottle of perfume with some carbonation."  My dad isn't a very demonstrative person, but I would imagine he was feeling like Buddy the Elf on the inside when he drank this one.

Day 21 proved to be the most complicated one to get open.  It actually required directions.  I mean, like multi-step directions with images to go with them.  Hello Kitty Ramune Strawberry soda.  Somehow or another, there's a marble enclosed in the bottle, acting like a stopper, so you can't just tip it back and drink the whole thing, even once you do figure out how to open it.  My dad found it frustrating and a "pain in the ---" to open.

I was striking out so bad on the series of drinks that I texted my dad half-way through and told him he was going to be cured of ever wanting to drink anything other than water ever again.

By the time we got to Christmas Eve and 24 drinks later, we had only three winners.  Three.  That's a 13% success rate.  The only qualification for being a winner was whether my dad would go out and buy it again.  Bolthouse Farms Peach Parfait Breakfast Smoothie, Bolthouse Farms Tropical Goodness, and Bai Costa Rica Clementine made the cut. So, yeah, maybe three out of 24 doesn't make me quite the all-star gift-giver I thought I'd be this year.

But then today, Day 25 came, Christmas Day.  I knew I had this one in the bag.  It was a can't-lose-option.  I wrapped up the bottle and put a note on the outside of it:  "Day 25.  This is it.  The grand finale.  The defining moment.  The sum of all things.  The apex of glory.  BEHOLD! The nectar of the gods, and most assuredly a WINNER."

I wrapped it in quite a few layers of wrapping paper, just to keep the suspense going.  I didn't want to make it too easy, after all.  He had made it through 25 days, so what was a few more minutes of fighting his way through some excessive amounts of wrapping paper?

Finally, he unveiled Day 25.  The heavens opened up, beams of sunlight poured down, angels sang.  A divine moment, no doubt.

And what should my dad find buried in the many layers?

Nothing less than a humble, pure, time-tested, classic, loved-by-all, bottle -

Of water.

There was no pouring this one down the drain.

Congratulations, Dad, on drinkin' your way through the holidays. 

You're the real winner of 'em all.