"The Unopened Can"

It had to be about 100 degrees outside. It was August and just shortly after noon. I was with a couple of friends, Steve and Richard. We were picking up aluminum cans along the side of the road to get candy money when Richard found a brown paper bag in the ditch. It wasn’t anything unusual to find these. People threw them out all the time on these back roads. He opened the bag to find the usual contents:the remains of a six-pack of beer. We never found a bag of soda cans. It was always beer in the brown bags.

We dumped the bag out in the road and greedily put our found treasure in our own bag. The one thing that made this particular bag different from the 100’s of other brown bags we had found over the last couple of summers was that in this bag there was one can still unopened.

“Wo, an unopened beer!” Richard proclaimed as if he had made some great discovery into the mysteries of life.

“Let me see that.” Steve reached for it like he had never seen one before.

“It’s an Old Milwaukee. That’s the king of beers. Somebody rich must have thrown this out.”

“Just open it and pour it out on the road and put the can in here.” I told him while holding the bag.

“No, I’m keeping it.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know just yet, but I’m taking it home.”

With that said we all three left our can hunting and headed back toward home. Richard was holding the beer behind his back like someone was going to see him with it on this dead empty road. There might be five cars pass in a day and four of them would be people that live out here.

So we walked back with Richard suspiciously carrying a full beer behind his back and I’ve got a near full bag of empties in my right hand. We were just so sophisticated for fourth graders it was unreal.

We get back to Richard’s trailer and went to hide behind his Dad’s shed with the beer. It was Richard’s idea; I was just hanging around to see what was going to happen.

“I’m gonna go call Jimmy, he’d like to see this.”

So we took the beer, wrapped it in a plastic bag, put the plastic bag under a bucket and put a cinder block on top of the bucket. You would have thought we were trying to hide a pirate’s chest or something. With the beer safely hidden we went to the trailer with Richard. It was some kind of unwritten law that you must never do anything alone.

Richard’s mom was in the trailer trying to shew flies out the backdoor with a bed sheet when we came in. We knew we couldn’t just call ol’ Jimmy and announce we had an Old Milwaukee right in front of her. We had to talk in code.

So Richard was on the phone to Jimmy and me and Steve are trying our best not to have that guilty look about us.

“Jimmy, I got somethin’ over here I want to show ya.”

“Rich, what is it? I’m tryin’ to watch the Thunder Cats. Can’t it wait?” Jimmy was more interested in his cartoon than anything we had to show him.

“Ya know what your dad sneaks out to the garage to do?” Richard was whispering so as not to be heard by his mom.

“Change the oil?”

“No, the other thing.”

“You’ve got a lawnmower over there?” Jimmy was puzzled.

“No, not a lawnmower, stupid. It starts with “O-L-D.” His secret coding was rather advanced for a ten year old. Jimmy, being only nine, couldn’t grasp it.

“You’ve got an old lawnmower over there?”

“Just come over!” Richard was growing impatient as so were we listening to this one sided conversation that was going nowhere.

“Alright, as soon as Thunder Cats goes off I’ll be over.” With that Jimmy hung up the phone.

Meanwhile, the three of us went back to make sure no one had discovered our beer. It was still there under the block, the bucket and inside the bag just like we had left it. While waiting on Jimmy we played this game where one of us would be the look out and the other two would take turns posing with the beer. The beer holder would pose, say something silly pretending to be a half drunk adult and we would all laugh.

“I love an ice cold beer on a hot day.”

“Honey, get me another cold one while you’re up will ya?”

“So then he yells “Shut’er down Goose, she’s suckin’ mud.”” That was the punch line of some joke Steve’s dad always made him leave the room before telling to company. He knew that line because his dad always yelled it and then everyone would laugh. ‘Til this day I have never heard that entire joke.

For the next twenty minutes or so we played that game waiting on Jimmy. Once he got there things picked up and got a little more entertaining.

“What have you boys got back there giggling like a bunch of girls?” Jimmy wasn’t the oldest but he was the biggest and he loved to call us girls just to make us mad.

Richard showed him the beer and his face lit up.

“Where’d you get that?” Jimmy reached for it and Rich pulled it back.

“I drink beer all the time. I got this out of my cooler.” Rich was trying to impress Jimmy but he knew he was lying.

“Well let us see you drink it then.” Jimmy threw down the gauntlet and Richard had to pick it up.

So Richard slowly pulled back the tab and cracked it open and received an Old Milwaukee bath for his efforts.

“Drink up big boy.” Out of all of us Jimmy was the best at pushing other people’s buttons, especially Richard’s. Jimmy was Richard’s nephew even though he was just a year younger. They had had a rivalry going as long as I could remember. One always had to outdo the other.

Richard closed his eyes and put the can to his lips. We all watched in amazement. He was really going to do it. He swallowed a mouthful of suds and turned about three shades of green from the warm beer. He coughed and gagged like he had just tasted a mixture of pee, vinegar and garlic. We all laughed like we had just seen a parade of clowns go by. I had tears in my eyes before I could catch my breath.

“How is it?” Jimmy asked still snickering.

“Oh, it’s good!” Richard answered with a sincere face as if he were talking to his grandmother or somebody like that.

Jimmy grabbed the can out of his hand and turned it up like he was trying to win a chug contest. No sooner had he tossed it back he was gagging and coughing worse than Richard. He had spit up on his shirt. It was coming out his nose. He looked pitiful. I had never laughed so hard in my life. It was ten times funnier than Richard. Jimmy’s freckled face looked like it was on fire as he choked helplessly. Man it was funny.

After ten minutes or so both Jimmy and Richard were back to normal or at least normal for them. We still had half a beer left and neither me nor Steve was about to drink it. We might still be able to have some fun with it. So back up the road we went. Richard and Jimmy were looking pale and sickly and Steve and I wore big grins like we had just seen the circus or something. I was now carrying the beer since Rich and Jim had both sworn to never touch another one. (If only that were true!)

We get to Steve’s house and I pour the remainder in his puppy’s water dish. Steve whistled for Midnight, his pup, and he came bouncing around the house ears flopping and tail wagging. Steve put his nose to the dish and the little puppy lapped the beer up like it was milk.

“Look at him go.”

“He likes it. Watch him.”

That puppy slurped every last drop of that beer up. It wasn’t even that much fun to watch. I figured he would cough or howl or something. With nothing else to see I crushed the can with my foot and we all walked in the direction of the basketball court. Midnight followed us and it wasn’t long before he started acting funny.

“Look at him. He can’t even walk right.” Jimmy exclaimed pointing at the puppy that was now partly dragging his right hind leg.

Midnight was holding his head down and swaying from side to side. This little puppy was drunk! It was obvious and much to the delight of us all.

“What’s the matter? Can’t ya hold yer liquor pup?” Jimmy shouted and we all burst out laughing again.