Once upon a time my friend Chad went to college.
Now, Chad likes to tell people what made him decide to go to school and the reasons why he traded in a job at Best Buy for a few hard years of hitting the books.
See, on a whim one weekend Chad packed his trunk and cruised down the highway to visit our friend Mike who was away at school. They didn’t have any plans but spent a couple days going out for drinks and eating meals at the residence dining hall.
And it was in that dining hall that Chad first came face to face with a big beautiful stainless steel object of his desire. Yes, he glanced up slowly and realized in a stunning moment that he was staring straight at chocolate milk on tap.
His jaw dropped and his eyeballs flashed fireworks as he immediately filled three glasses with the sweet-flowing brown gold and let his brain reel with infinite possibilities.
“It’s like neverending chocolate milk,” he said at the time, his eyebrows furrowed and his head bobbing in quick nods. And then: “I gotta go to college!”
Yes, this really is a true story. Chocolate milk on tap convinced Chad to ditch his job and head down the highway the following year. Chocolate milk on tap changed his life because anything on tap is great.
Let’s count down some killer classics:
• Slurpees. Flip the switch sideways and let the crystal cola slide smoothly into your cup like a snake. For bonus points, mix and match flavors until your drink looks like the surface of Jupiter.
• Brown soda. Did you ever get behind an open bar at a wedding when you were a kid? Hey, if you remember mixing tall glasses full of fountain Coke, Sprite, Orange, and Root Beer into delightfully tangy swill, you had a great childhood.
• Beer at a keg party. Forget the bottles and cans for a night. Now it’s time for some foamy pumping. If you’re the one guy who actually knows how to tap the keg then you’re the official dude responsible for keeping everyone’s red plastic cups full tonight.
• Maple syrup. Just toss on your hiking boots in the dead of winter, walk silently to the middle of the forest, and tap that tree to get it done, son. It’s time to get sticky.
• Soft serve ice cream. Don’t you love it when your local all-you-can-eat buffet has that soft serve ice cream machine sitting right in the open? You can squeeze a little swirl into your warm, plastic wet-from-the-dishwasher bowl, or go cowboy and build the tallest, swirliest ice cream known to man.
• Water. If you’ve got a drink in the kitchen, clean hands in the bathroom, and a hot shower in the tub, then today’s your day to say thanks.
• Nacho cheese at 7-Eleven. Now here’s the heaviest hitter of all. When you swirl your salty 7-Eleven nachos under that hot pump of oozing cheese, you’re in for a good night. I once saw a guy fill up a Big Gulp cup with the stuff and take it home. The cashier was so surprised that she just charged him for a soft drink. Good deal, man.
People, listen up: when you come face to face with anything on tap all Coke cans and beer bottles fade to dark black. You grab control of the boat and start pumping nozzles and squeezing triggers with reckless abandon, breaking free of the tight shackles of portion control and sailing deeper and deeper into a shadowy paradise of no rules … no order … and no limits.
AWESOME!
