Near Beer and a Decaf Fourth of July

This afternoon, after I was done flying my mission, I went and had my Fourth of July lunch/dinner. The band had a brass quartet playing patriotic music as I walked in. To the strains of America the Beautiful I made my way to the serving lines. At the front of the dining facility were elaborate cake decorations, and sculptures made of ice, fruit, and butter. I received my serving of fatty, gristly prime rib and dried out lobster tail, visited the surprisingly sparse salad bar and sat down to eat.

I had eaten my meal, shared in some conversation and then got up to leave. As I walked to the exit of the dining facility, I saw a station that normally has powdered Gatorade® or other powdered drinks to mix with water, but today it had Coors® non-alcoholic beer (also called “near beer”). I grabbed two and headed out the door.

Everything about my experience in the dining facility today had been designed to make me feel festive and more “at home” this far away from home. On the contrary, it did nothing more than accentuate the differences between being here and being home. Up to and including the near beer that I drank on the steps of our headquarters (where this thought hit me).

Nobody who has tasted real beer, despite the eventual arguments of which beer that might be, could ever mistake near-beer for being the real thing. Nobody who knows the taste of good coffee (amongst the same arguments as the beer) will ever mistake decaffeinated coffee for real coffee. If offered to such a person, it will be spewed out with expletives and the incredulous demand of, “What is this shit?!?”

When I was a young teenager and a member of a group often described as a cult, a teacher of mine brought near beer to the class and offered it to us to taste. It was a generic brand and actually said “Near Beer” on the can. It was offered in the sense of, “Taste this and see how nasty it is and you will never want to taste the real thing.” And it was nasty, and so my religious resolve to not drink alcohol was strengthened. My decision sold to me as freedom from sin. My bondage to the Law made fast through the use of a facsimile, a fake thing offered to me as the truth.

Posted by: HarryTick™ on 4. July 2007, 19:22 |