When I took communion this Sunday, and sipped the blood of Christ out of a tiny, plastic cup, I wondered if it was those years of shooting back Welch's that trained me so admirable to take shots as a 21 year old. Cue my mom's eye-roll.
Since Mom spent a lot of Saturdays at 7th and Beech laminating golden calves and staffs, Cari and I had to entertain ourselves. Our usual MO was pillaging any room with an unlocked door. Once, for fun, we decided to examine every cabinet and drawer in the kitchen, and that's when we found a bag of communion cups. We were both young, thus unbaptized, and had never been able to drink from the mythical, elusive cups. So of course, we fished two out of the bag and discussed possible drinking methods. Since we had been watching the adults drink the blood of Christ since we could remember, we had discerned two different methods. We figured we should practice drinking so we wouldn't look silly doing the "slow motion, slight grimace swallow." That method reminded me of how I took my yearly strep throat medicine that had to be kept in the refrigerator to maintain it's lard-like viscosity. All the prim and proper adults sipped that way, keeping their lips tightly pursed. These were not the cool people in church and we wanted to be cool. All the cool people drained their cups in one big swoosh. Their necks would snap back as if pulled by an imaginary thread before returning to the still, solemn pose they were in beforehand. Cari and I practiced for an hour, critiquing each other for posture, subtlety, and style.
I can only deduce that the attention paid the rudimentary skills of gulping a small bit a grape juice help me later in life. And no, mom, not just for taking shots. I also think this helped me final learn how to swallow the strep throat pills instead of having to take the fetid, pink syrup. So, thanks Church of Christ communion cups for teaching me to be a grown-up.
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