The Real PBR Story

No, I didn't run the license plate, discover the girls were underage, and then call campus police to arrest them for minors in possession of alcohol (but that version is funnier).

---

The two robust young girls in bright sundresses were walking back. The taller one had her arms full of PBR. I laughed out loud, unable to believe that the jokes were true. I knew for sure they were college kids. No one else that age would be so stupid or cliché to drink that shit. Since I am from an older and more distinguished generation, I know that Pabst Blue Ribbon is for alcoholics who have either gone blind or have brain damage from drinking too much rubbing alcohol. My grandfather had a Pabst sign in his garage as a joke. No one who lived in a home with a foundation actually drank that stuff.
            The charitable part of my personality got the better of me and ran outside with a twenty dollar bill in my hand.
            “Here,” I said offering the portrait of Jackson to the girl with a hand free. “Go buy yourself some real beer.”
            Her hand continued to swing with her step. Noses wrinkled upwards and I detected an imminent wave of teenage indignancy radiating towards me.
           “No.” There is no real way to write how that ‘no’ sounded. It was two very long, drawn-out, offended syllables. It was the same ‘no’ that men out of their league heard in bars, that scantily-clad women mistakenly propositioned on corners uttered, and the sound of an emotion that only recently former juveniles could feel. It was a sound of horror, disgust, the utmost offense taken, and truly a jarring feeling for whoever was on the other end of it.
           “No. We like this beer. We don’t want your money,” blue dress said.
I heard 30 cans of inferior beer jangle past me like a plea for help. The beer cans were calling me, begging me to return them to their destiny. Oh, how those cans wanted to be returned to the shelf, to be guzzled in short order by a welfare collecting senior who wouldn’t notice the taste. They wanted to be drunk and recycled for more beer money, or turned into an ingredient in someone’s home meth lab. Slowly being sipped like it was fine wine or a tasty craft beer while drunken minors trashed a rental house was a cruel fate. They were not meant to be drank by kids who enjoyed the sense of irony.