Blueberry Whine

I walked past a liquor store this evening and spontaneously decided that it would be nice to have a glass of wine with my dinner. When I walked in, the first thing that caught my eye was a bottle of blueberry wine. “Mmm, blueberry wine”, I thought, “that sounds perfect.” So I bought it, and walked the eight blocks back to my apartment. I unpacked the rest of my groceries, got out a wine glass, and opened the drawer to get out the corkscrew.... Corkscrew? I was sure I had one. How could I not have a corkscrew? Have I seriously not opened a bottle of wine in the entire eight months I've been living here? I guess not. I didn't have a corkscrew. So I tried to open the bottle with a metal coat hanger, but that didn't work. I was getting pretty desperate, so I plucked up the courage to knock on the door next to mine and ask my neighbour, whom I've never met, if I could borrow one. She didn't have one either. I knocked on every single door on my floor. Nothing. Eight households, and nobody had a corkscrew.

One of my co-workers lives a couple buildings over from me, so I called the bookstore to get his number. He didn't answer. It was a long shot anyway: he doesn't drink. While I was thinking of work I remembered that we got a letter in the post a couple days ago with a complementary swiss army knife key chain in it, which happened to include a corkscrew. The downtown location of our bookstore chain is only a couple blocks away from my apartment, so I walked over there to see if they got the same thing in the mail. Of course they didn't, but Chris searched the store for me just in case there was one hiding somewhere. When his search failed, he told me that there was a wine store around the corner that was probably still open. When I got there, there was a sign on the door saying they were closed for a private wine tasting party. Just my luck.

I crossed the street and went into a small upscale grocery store. I found a rack of pretentious kitchen utensils. I found five different spatulas, a garlic peeler, a garlic press, a nut cracker, a lobster cracker, a melon baller, even a citrus zester. No corkscrew. So I asked an employee for help. He showed me to another rack of kitchen supplies. We found more spatulas, two different kinds of can openers, a silicone pot holder, a beer bottle opener (we were getting close now). No corkscrew.

I was about to admit defeat and began to walk home when I decided that I'd come too far to give up. I was so frustrated by that point that all I wanted was a drink. Ironic that. That the frustration of not being able to open a bottle of wine only increases your need for it's contents. And I knew that if I returned home without a corkscrew I'd spent the rest of the night staring at the bottle in agony. So I walked the eight blocks back to the liquor store I had left nearly three hours earlier and bought a bloody corkscrew.

And after all that, the wine isn't even very good.