Sweet, Sweet Ambrosia of the Gods

It was almost three weeks ago when I began to view the Swiss Farm Stores with curiousity. It's a small grocery chain located only here in Delaware County, and their two main selling points are 1) that it's a drive-thru grocery store, and 2) the buildings are shaped like large white silos. These two gimmicks alone practically assured my patronage, but the question was when that destined visit would actually occur.

This morning, I decided that today was going to be the big day. My stocks of Florida Orange Juice had been severely depleted, and this week's schedule of soccer, frisbee, and intense research coring demanded vast amounts of Gatorade and/or Powerade. Visiting the website, I found that both Gatorade and Powerade were on sale, with the offer expiring today, imagine that! It seemed that destiny was already on my side.

So I quickly printed out an order form (not neccesary, but I'd rather fill out a form than talk to a person), and scanned the contents. Orange juice, check. Powerade (which was cheaper), check. Eggs, check. Breakfast muffin sandwich since I hadn't eaten breakfast yet, check. That was all I needed, I thought. But on one final scan, my eyes suddenly caught onto one additional product, inconspiciously listed and not on sale.

In my senior year of high school, I had three major concerns about coming up to Swarthmore. First was Swarthmore's infamously brutal workload. Second was the cold yankee winters, and having to deal with snow in increments of feet rather than quarters of an inch. And third, the one which everyone laughed at me for, was how I could possibly survive without sweet iced tea. It was my favorite drink since childhood, the perfect complement to almost twenty full years of meals in the South. What else was there that I could possibly drink? I didn't know, and I was scared, and I seriously considered staying close to home at UNC just for the sweet tea. I didn't know what to do. I was lost.

Somehow, I've endured two long school years without my ambrosia. But here, on the Swiss Farm Stores order form, I finally found my salvation from the lonely months of suffering. When I saw that they carried Southern Brew Iced Tea in 1/2 gallon and full gallon containers, my heart exploded with joy. This is where I leap into the air, in slow motion, with a face filled with pure ecstasy, fists pumped into the sky.

My mind was filled with nothing but thoughts of sweet tea as I drove to the nearest Swiss Farm Store. I'm sure that I sped through about four red lights and didn't even notice or care. Sweet tea is like my heroin, and I will go to whatever lengths necessary in order to obtain it.

The actual ordering process was completely anticlimactic. A surly high school dropout took my form and trudged into the silo. A few minutes later, he emerged with a few plastic bags filled with my goods...except...no sweet tea...I was sinking into a sea of despair...and loneliness...

"We ran out of the 1/2 gallon size of the Southern Iced Tea. Do you want the full gallon?"

The siren's song lifted me out of my black seas of darkness, and I answered yes as angels began to descend from the clouds above. After I paid, I drove home and my car seemed to levitate above the ground, lifted by the white angels. So yes, it's actually exactly like heroin.

So now I'm sitting at my computer drinking this Southern Brew Iced Tea. It's not bad. There's way too much lemon, for one. Certainly no Bojangles iced tea, but then again, what is? It's better than Nestea or Lipton at least, and it's the closest I've come up here in this foreign and hostile country of The North. All I can think about right now is: I need another fix.




Links to come later.