WineLife365

No matter how hard we try to protect them, care for them, and keep them out of harm’s way – one wine experience that we can all relate to is broken wine glasses.  I bet you thought I was going to talk about children!  It’s an inevitable fact of physics that sooner or later, if you drink wine, you’re gonna break a glass, or two, or three along the way.  What else can be said about this well documented occurrence other than:  “Shit happens!”  And for some, it happens a lot!

Photo Courtesy of Gonzo Gastronomy

My favorite blogging pal, Katie Pizzuto from Gonzo Gastronomy, recently experienced one of these wine glass moments and was kind enough to share it.  Here’s Katie’s story!

There is a pain to be felt in this life unlike any other.  It is pain that is colorblind, that does not discriminate sexually, and that will cut you down at the knees whether you are 40 or 80. In fact, I have given drug-free childbirth, have had teeth extracted and have even gotten 18 stitches across my thigh with nothing but a little poorly-distributed anesthesia from a pimple-faced, fucknut anesthesiologist to abate the pain, and still I describe those memories with less recollection of pain than I do…say…a broken wine glass. Not just any wine glass, but a $35 wine glass. And not just a $35 wine glass, but a $35 wine glass I was given. The sound of that glass hitting a glass table…hitting a wood floor…hell, hitting just about everything other than the ceiling…is enough to make a grown woman cry (and inevitably console herself with freshly poured wine, in a $3 glass).

I have…ugh, I mean had…only 2 expensive wine glasses in my home, both samples sent to me from the manufacturers for experimentation/review. My home has never seen the likes of $10 glasses much less $35 glasses because the people residing in said home are not merely accident prone, but accident friendly—one of them an 11-year-old boy who has already seen the inside of an emergency room 3 times. Throw into the mix 2 cats with a penchant for jumping up into your lap at the least opportune moment and you have what I lovingly call a cluster fuck of chaos. Welcoming not one, but two expensive glasses into the home was done with a whole lot of trepidation and distant early warning like, “please don’t ever wash these glasses, I’ll take care of it…please don’t ever try to put these glasses away in their boxes, I’ll do that…please don’t ever sneeze, belch or fart near them, I’ll…oh, that’s enough I guess.” I looked at these as delicate flowers, to be taken out only when a moment really called for them, never left at the mercy of even a strong breeze.

So there it sat, a lovely Eisch breathable glass, gracing my living room table with its belly full of syrah. The lights had been dimmed, it was 9:30 and the boy was saying good night. But “saying good night” is relative in my house. It comes with several verses of an Eminem or Iron Maiden song, a few righteous “kills” with his laser tag machine gun, and usually, if dinner was good, a giggle-accompanied fart while he kisses his dad. As he kisses me goodnight, he turns so quickly with his machine gun that he comes within centimeters of knocking over the glass. “Jesus!” I scream. “Would you please watch where you are going?! You nearly knocked over my glass! Do you have $35 to spare if you break it? No, I didn’t think so.” There, I thought, I let him have it! He bounds up the stairs to brush his teeth, the hubby heads outside for a cigarette and I decide, with my program paused, that I’ve gotta see a man about a horse. I never got that expression, but whatever. I gently move the blanket off of me, get off the couch, take two steps towards the bathroom, and CRASH. I froze. The kid came bounding back down the steps. The husband came back wincing. The cats began lapping up the syrah, getting their buzz on despite the chards of glass in their tongues. OK, I made that last part up. I carefully remove my bare feet from ground zero and stare at the disaster I’ve left in my wake. And what does the kid do? That kid that I just chided to be more careful? That kid that had maybe $3 in his piggy bank? In that golden-moment opportunity, where he could’ve thrown everything I had just said back in my face, he chose, instead, to wrap his arms around my waist and console his grieving mother. “I’m sorry, mom,” he said, and then farted one more time for good measure as he bound back up the stairs.

Thanks Katie! 

Eisch, if you happen to be reading this tragically beautiful story – could you please help my friend out and send her some new glasses?