Talls and Smalls - A new kind of drink

I got a message from an ex-girlfriend on Facebook the other day. We actually talk periodically and sometimes manage to play a game of Ticket to Ride or Codenames online. There is a lot to be said about this person, and many people in my life.

The story involving her that I am thinking of now stems back to one of the regular visits she was on here with me. At the time, she lived in Michigan and I lived in the Fargo-Moorhead area, where I went to college. It was her turn to visit me.

We often had a great time doing whatever. I asked her one evening if she wanted a drink. She said yes. I told her I was going to make her a special drink — the “Talls and Smalls.” Our dynamic was such that she was much shorter and I was much taller and the nicknames were what you would expect, thus I was Talls and she was Smalls.

Both of us were not immune to pulling some sort of pranks or — shenanigans — on one another. She would get even with me on what this “Talls and Smalls” drink I was mixing up for her would be eventually though. I had received some wine as a gift from a opening for a show I was stage manager for the Fargo-Moorhead Community Theatre. The wine tasted like paint remover in my opinion and had been sitting in my refrigerator for weeks. I grabbed that, a bottle of cola, and some grenadine. I poured a ridiculous amount of wine in a tall glass with just enough cola and grenadine to give it color without looking washed out.

She drank this without question and rather quickly. I am not really sure how my eyes were not huge with the look of surprise that she didn’t realize something was wrong with the drink. In fact, she liked it and asked for another. So I went back and made the same drink, perhaps slightly stronger this time. She started drinking that as well.

When she had finished her second glass, I asked, “You’re kidding me right? You are just playing along or something. How can you not taste that?” She was dumbfounded and asked, “What?” I said, “Your drink. I may have put some wine in it. In fact, it’s like 90% wine. You can’t tell me you don’t taste that.”

She was a little humorously upset with me and gave me a punch in the shoulder. “Are you trying to get me drunk,” she said laughingly. I really wasn’t. I didn’t know how anyone couldn’t have tasted that. She told me it tasted fine. I had to mix another one and taste it for myself.

I had already used up about three-quarters of the bottle of wine so there was really only enough left for about one glass. I was completely blown away. It tasted essentially like a cherry cola. It was good! It is as if the antidote for this really crappy wine was some grenadine and cola.

Thus, the “Talls and Smalls” drink was born and it’s been something we have laughed about every day since. I’ll explain her comical revenge on me in another instance of Schoenecker’s Shenanigans later.