Drink 2: Grape Crush

The Story: Will became friends with my brother Ben in 1988 when Ben “negotiated” his way into a shared locker with Will in the band room as a seventh grader when only eighth graders had lockers there.

Will became a part of our family about ten minutes later. He was around our house a lot for the next five or six years and then he joined the Marines and has been stationed away from home for the past 17 years.

Apparently, when he was a kid, Will had a huge crush on me. I’m not sure I really knew that until he admitted it to me a few years ago and now it’s our shtick. If you ever see him comment or post on my Facebook page, you’ll see what I mean.

But I didn’t have a drink with just Will, so let me tell you about Gwen.

Gwen moved to Manchester just in time for high school and hung around with the gang Ben and Will ran with. Gwen reminded Will the night we had our drink that she originally asked Ben to jump out of her birthday cake and, when he said no, Will did. There was some confusion over whether they were actually dating at the time, but they’ve been together ever since, which is what makes the whole ‘crush’ thing so amusing.

So now I see Will and Gwen a few times a year when they come home to visit and it’s always fantastic. In between visits, though, we stay connected and keep up on each other’s lives via Facebook.

You’ll see in our picture that they were on a couch and I popped over to sit with them. After the picture had been snapped, Will piped up and started squawking about why he was on the end and not in the middle of the two women, to which his awesome wife replied: “because I’m the woman who came between you!” Perfect and completely awesome!!

The Drink: After brainstorming and surfing for drinks that were military inspired, band inspired, bicycle inspired, we finally found the actually inspired drink: a Grape Crush – to symbolize the ‘crush’ Will has had on me for the past 25 years.

Will is mostly a beer drinker, so when the waitress came around to ask how it was, he said, “it’s horrible, but it’s perfect. It’s not a matter of someone made it wrong. It just tastes bad!”

And then he finished it.