wine  [wahyn] –noun
the fermented juice of grapes, made in many varieties, such as red, white, sweet, dry, still, and sparkling, for use as a beverage, in cooking, in religious rites, etc., and usually having an alcoholic content of 14 percent or less.

Wine. It’s the only steady relationship you have. Wine is always there for you. It has seen you through the good and the bad. The classy and the trashy. Wine can get you in situations that you can later blame on, you guessed it, the wine. You don’t really mean it, though.

Elementary School (Christmas). Your cousin gave you some white zinfandel which you declared to be gross, as good kids are taught to do when presented with underaged drinking, so she mixed it with coke. That was not the solution.

Junior High. Sandbagged it on the rare Chinese occasions where Coke and Sprite were not the only choices besides tea.

High school. Drank whatever you could get, and wine usually wasn’t the easy choice seeing as corkscrews were never handy.

New York City. The infamous gallon jug of wine bought at a corner shop, the black and white photo evidence, the reminder that wine is more potent than beer.

Washington, D.C. Your wine connoisseur friends introduce you to some nice selections, but you are too enthralled knowing people who know about wine to figure out what the hell you’re drinking.

England. Whatever was cheap. Wine was the easiest thing to share. All you had to do was buy a bottle, and the conversations would flow.

Europe. Had sangria for the first time. Wine, soda, and chunks of fruit. How could you not enjoy Spain, not to mention every other country where wine was cheaper than water and the house selection kicked the ass of every brand you buy today. Oh, and the introduction of calimocho too (cheap red wine + Coke = tastier than you would believe).

Last year of college. Charles Shaw aka Two Buck Chuck. Too many hangovers.

Post-college (Job with money). Moved onto the “high class” stuff. BV Coastal. $6.89 a bottle and worth every penny (compared to ‘ol Chuck). With money comes the ability to experiment with different types of grapes and confirm a general disdain for Chardonnay and Merlot.

Depression. Nothing an entire bottle of wine couldn’t get you through. You learn to be amazed at how much Pinot Grigio you can drink and what you can’t get away with when drunk. You declare to want a Tempurpedic mattress so you can go to bed with a glass of wine; you’re immediately told you already do that.

Sideways. Something about the sadness of Paul Giamatti’s character clicks with you, and you drink a bottle of Pinot Noir to a) console yourself for being a loser and b) to celebrate the film.

Being 24 years old. For some reason you still don’t have proper glasses so you choose a mug with a chip in it. When you sit on your futon to write and place your mug on the desk, your computer ants flock to your mug within minutes. You have no choice but to flick that ant away and down the rest of the mug’s contents. You are 24, and you still live by the 10-second rule.

Congratulations. You deserve more wine.