The Last Glass
By H.G. Miller
They might not have been the finest pieces of drink ware ever manufactured. I’m guessing my boss probably purchased them at a holiday sale price when he was desperately searching for a gift to give me as the year wound down in 2003.
However, they were mine. A set of four clear glasses to compliment the multitude of plastic cups I had acquired from fast food joints and sports stadiums over the years. As tends to happen with nice dishes in a bachelor’s apartment, each glass became dinged and cracked and met an eventual demise in the kitchen sink of my apartment on Genesee in Los Angeles.
Here are their stories:
#1
It was your typical careless dishwashing disaster. You’ve got four of these glasses hanging around, and you don’t appreciate them the way you should. It was late and I wanted to get to bed. When this combustible combination of urgency and exhaustion met with a new bottle of dish soap… well, I picked up the glass too quickly and before I even knew my grip was insufficient it shot from my hand into the side of the sink, shattering into three distinct pieces.
I was momentarily stunned by the suddenness of the action. However, I did not mourn for long, as there were still three bowls, a couple of spoons and my pasta drainer that needed tending to.
#2
Doing the dishes was the furthest thing from my mind when the second glass met its ruin. I was late for work and figured a glass of Coke would have to get me by until I could make a run for one of the breakfast burritos the Iranian guy sold in the lobby of my building. Of course, drinking Coke from the can has always given me violent hiccups, so I grabbed one of my glasses and jammed a couple of ice cubes into it.
The Coke fizzed and popped in quite a delightful way as I poured it over the ice. I must say it was a fairly satisfying experience – on par with the Platonic images of smiling actors drinking the product in television commercials.
A check of the clock showed that my morning leisure time was dwindling, so I casually dropped the glass into the sink. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the distance from my hand to the bottom of the sink and the speed at which the glass would cover this space. As I was leaving in haste, I would not even know about the lengthwise crack in the glass until I came home in the evening.
#3
Another dishwashing debacle. My iPod was playing the “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” track from The Offspring’s 1998 album
Americana.
My mind had wandered from the similarity in nomenclature to Roger Clyne and the Peacemaker’s
¡Americano!
to an in-depth analysis of the album’s concept.
I remembered how many people dismissed the Offspring at that point as just another jokey punk band. Several of the songs on the album contained riffs that were either direct rip-offs or very very analogous “tributes” to other songs. I was starting to wonder, though, if the whole thing had been completely intentional. Perhaps The Offspring had sprung a high-concept album on the world and we just didn’t get it?
Needless to say, I was paying little attention to the details of my dishwashing duties, and when I shifted my large frying pan in the sink, it crushed the second to last glass against the side.
#4
When you get down to one last dish from any set, you tend to treat it as an overprotective parent would a small child. My last glass lived the life of a king. No more carbonated beverages. No last minute meals, or late night thirst quenching. Only pure ice and the finest bourbon would be poured into its cylinder.
Alas… were that we could all take care of the things we love forever.
The glass was resting comfortably in the drying rack on the right side of my sink when I decided to make bacon for breakfast. This was healthy bacon, mind you, made from turkey meat and sporting a killer tagline on the package: “Welcome back to bacon.” Needless to say, it tasted like crap, and I was in a bit of a foul mood as I dissembled my griddle to prepare it for washing.
The power cord stuck into the base of the griddle and I pushed with more force than was probably necessary to dislodge it. In a flash, the solid plastic piece was flying across my kitchen counter on a fateful journey to the drying rack and my lone glass…
I don’t suppose I need to go any further from here. My last glass was no match for the power cord and before I knew what happened, my life as a grown up human being – the kind who could pull out a fine set of matching glass ware for mixed drinks when company stopped by – had vanished.
I let the glass rest in pieces at the bottom of my sink for a day or so. Throwing it away proved to be a painful experience both spiritually and physically (turns out I don’t have any more Band-Aids around, either).
I know that I’ll eventually get another set of glasses. People are telling me about a sale at Bed, Bath & Beyond like it will make the hurt just go away. But, nothing will replace those mixed drinks and delicious Coke moments. I only hope to hang on to those memories. For, they are mine forever.