Milkshake #3

This Milkshake Awareness story is written by The Spaced Invader

This is my milkshake drinking straw
I drink milkshakes with this straw

I looked up and down the train but there was hardly anybody on it and it never even changed no matter how many damn times I looked. There was a couple sitting a few rows up from me. They were sitting there holding hands all goosey like a couple of kids. They couldn't have been much older than me. Maybe 18 or 19 at the most. They looked boring but there really wasn't anyway else to talk to so I walked over and took a seat across from them.

"Sorry to interrupt, but I was wondering if one of you might have a cigarette. I just ran out."

"Oh, sorry. No I don't. Shelly, you have one for the lad?"

Lad? What a jerk. He was barely older than me. But that's how it is with most people. They're a lousy year older than you and they think they can hole the entire world over your head. Anyway, Shelly said she didn't have any either, so I reached into my pocket and took out a straw, popping the end in my mouth and chewing on it.

"What is that?" Shelly asked.

"Well, dear, that's a straw," the guy answered for me.

"Oh, no," I said, taking the straw out and having a good look at it like it was some big deal. People believe the dumbest things if you just tell it to them right. "This isn't just any straw."

"No?" asked the man.

"That's right. This is my milkshake drinking straw."

"But you've not got a milkshake," he responded.

"Sure, not right now I don't. But who's to say I won't have one just any darn minute now. In fact, I can see one right there. Sip. And another one over there. Sip. That's just how these things work." I almost called him sir, but I didn't want to give into his smugness at being a whole year or two older than me so I just asked him his name, "Say, kiddo, didn't catch your name. Caught hers. Shelly. Right?"

"Yes that's right," Shelly said, "And this is Jim."

"That's right, buster. Name's Jim. What's it to ya?"

"Just trying to be polite is all. Thought it'd help if I knew your name." People are just the worst sometimes. Just the absolute worst.

"Well, it's Jim, buster. What's yours?"

There he went with that 'buster' again. Who did this guy think he was. I told him my name was Robert. That I was named after the great war general Robert E. Lee. That you could trace my roots back to him and that I must've inherited his tactical awareness because I hadn't lost a battle with a milkshake yet. That got a hoot out of both of them. Even Jimbo. Anyway, they turned out to be just the boringest couple you'd ever met, so I excused myself and headed down to the dining car.

I ordered one vanilla milkshake and the guy served it in some junky styrofoam cup and handed it on over. I paid, thanked him and returned back to my car.

I sat down across from ol' Jimmers and took that straw out of my mouth and stuck it right into the milkshake.

"This is my milkshake drinking straw," I told him. "I drink milkshakes with this straw."

So I sipped and sipped on the milkshake until it was gone. I cleaned the straw off with my tongue and placed the straw back inside my inner-coat pocket.

I looked back at Jim and said to the lousy kid, "you know, Jimbo, if this aisle were a table and this milkshake were a game, just remember I'd be the hot-shot with the straw."

I laughed and walked back to my seat. The hot-shot with the straw. Oh, that'd just boil him. Wouldn't that just boil him?