The Orange Soda Tantrums of Early March

Last night, on the way home, I got a call from the home-phone, and I could hear Daniel's voice, in elusive, distant swirls of other-communication, but I couldn't get a conversation started with him. I assumed, as I do now, that he probably pressed "Redial," and I was grateful that this time, in his dialing fury, he didn't accidentally hit 911, as he has in the past, and the town police would not be visiting our house. But eventually Amy picked up the phone, and then Daniel ended up back on the line, asking me what happened to the second bottle of blood-red-orange soda that I picked up from the grocery story roughly three weeks ago. I opined that this bottle had probably been consumed some time ago, and Daniel had the standard, even perfunctory, meltdown.

But since I was on the way home anyway, etc., I figured I'd pick up another bottle of this unusual, oddly-healthy-seeming soda, and when we got home, the "shots" got passed around. Soon, Daniel was agitating for a re-fill, but I delayed, and while he stepped away from the TV, the show ended, Ian turned off the DVD-player, and when Daniel came back, he found that there was no more video entertainment.

This disaster sent him into a more advanced, less perfunctory meltdown -this time because he had anticipated the experience of drinking his second glass of blood-red-orange soda while watching the video, and now the video was over, so this much-longed-for synthesis of multiple uplifting experiences into a coherent, composite whole, would never happen. I actually understand this Angst - the sense that there's no point in going on a road-trip if you don't have a cup of mid-to-high-quality coffee in hand, for example, so I obliged, and had Ian put on another little video while Daniel consumed his second glass.

But then Daniel wanted a third glass, and I told him there wasn't much left, and we had to share it with anyone else who wanted some. This melt-down was more perfunctory than spontaneous, but it was also particularly charged. But I insisted, and gave Ian a small glass - significantly smaller than Daniel's, since Daniel was the one who really wanted it, but I still wanted to establish that the drink is for everyone, and make sure people got to enjoy it before the bottle was entirely empty.

Daniel's indignation was tremendous, at my act of splitting the last of the bottle between him and Ian:

"Oh - I never get the rest of something!"

It's true.

(Daniel, March 9, 2012)