Pouring a beer is a folk art. The technique is passed down through the generations, but in a way it feels almost instinctive. I can't actually remember when I learned how to pour a beer, yet I have this sense of a memory of my father teaching me how to tilt the glass just right and to pour against the glass and then slowly rotate the glass upright to allow for the perfect amount of head.
The man I almost nearly manslaughtered on my way home from work helped me decide not to run last night. The runner, clearly visible with his orange reflective vest, performed a tightrope routine with the snowline along the road, weaving back and forth against the oncoming traffic. I thought about the mess I almost made of this guy and for some reason concluded that I didn't want there to be a stain in the place where there used to be my head.
So when I got home, in the final act of not running, I opened the bag of pretzels I treated myself to last time I went grocery shopping. I nommed on a couple handfuls and thought, Man, these pretzels are making me thirsty.
Luckily, I had not drunk all the beer in my fridge yet.
It doesn't matter how good I get at something, I still somehow manage to screw it up every now and again. I misspell "mispell." I run too fast at the beginning of a race. I don't eat before boozing. Like some brash 17-year-old cadging a bottle of daddy's stash to impress his friends, I poured the Labatt Blue too fast into a frosty glass at the exact incorrect angle. The result, as you may already suspect, was the inverse of the golden ratio between fizzy beer and foamy head.
As I stood there, with this tall glass of foam and a half-empty bag of pretzels, I held a salty twist in my hand and looked at the bungled beer and just you know kind of decided to you know dip it--you know, in the foam.
Sometimes I make dumb mistakes, but sometimes those mistakes lead to some pretty sweet ideas. As Bob Ross might say, it was a happy little mistake.
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