How bad do you "need" beer??

In today's blog, names have been changed to protect the guilty...just to let you know.

Chris and I were going out of town for a session of paint school. We would be gone 4 days and were being accompanied by friends/clients of his business. The trip was going great, six hours of good conversation and laughs. We finally arrived at our destination and it was just after dark. Now we are from WV and had travelled to eastern PA. The other things you need to know is that in WV you can buy beer anywhere. In PA, you can only buy beer from a distributor or restaurant that has a bar.

We had stopped for dinner and Susie had a beer with her meal. Her boyfriend, Hal, who is Chris's customer, didn't drink and neither did Chris or myself. We stopped at the local IGA before going to the hotel to grab a few things. Chris and I were getting some tea and milk and we heard Susie at the info desk. She was screaming at the checker about something. Chris sorta gave me that "help" look, so I went over. Susie was wanting to know where the beer was in the store. The clerk told her that they didn't have any, and Susie was accusing her of lying. Hal told Susie that he didn't know, and I told her that to buy beer we had to go to a distributor. She accused us all of lying and said that we had all conspired together to involve her in this elaborate practical joke. It took a while, but we finally convinced her that we were not pulling her leg. Susie, meanwhile, was doing her best job of convincing us that she was not an alcoholic and didn't "need" beer. The checker told us about a couple places we could try to get Susie some beer, and that several of those were closed, so we may have to wait till the next day. Well, to Susie that was just totally unexceptable. We all checked out and left. The look of relief on the clerk's face as we were leaving said it all. I could tell she was wondering what kind of nut we had picked up.

We wanted to stop at the restaurant/bar across the parking lot, but they only sold beer by the pitcher, and that wouldn't stay fresh for long. I don't know it would have lasted long enough to get stale at this point. I was pretty embarrassed by Susie's fit in the grocery store, and was getting irritated. I don't even get this crazy about Mountain Dew! And I LOVE Mountain Dew! So away we went on the great beer chase. To this day if someone is desperately searching for something, Chris and I call it "pulling a Susie". We passed several bar/restaurants that were unacceptable to Susie, and had stopped at a few places that didn't sell beer in bottles or cans, only in pitchers. So the quest continued, with Susie defending herself every minute and declaring that in no way did she "need" the beer, just wanted to have it in the room with her "in case"... After about 30 minutes of driving around, we finally pull up to a bar that will sell beer in bottles. Susie tore out of the car and into the bar. She was back in just a little while with her six pack. Only ONE six-pack, mind you. After all this trouble, I would have expected her to come back with a case at least. She said that the bartender told her that she could only purchase one six-pack per visit. If she wanted another one, she would have to go to the car and then come back in. THIS she refused to do. Now throwing the big, screaming fit in the grocery store that mortified the rest of us was just fine. But she was NOT going to go back into that bar for another six-pack and have them think she was some kind of alcoholic. Well, at this point I was no longer thinking she was, I was convinced.

Finally we got to the hotel and checked in and went to our rooms. We had two days of hanging out at the hotel. At least I hung out. Susie went shopping. She bought so much stuff that we almost didn't have room for our luggage on the return trip. I rode all the way home with my floor space full of our stuff. On top of all of this, she wanted to stop and buy a whole new set of lawn furntiture and cushions at one of the local stores. Hal asked her if she thought we were going to strap it to the roof. I felt like the Clampett's as it was. And the six-pack of beer...she didn't drink a single one. Took the entire six-pack home with her...