Never Buy Cheap Liquor In Ohio
The legal drinking age in Ohio was 18 when I was in high school, and boy, did we ever drink. I'll tell you what we didn't do. We never returned cheap liquor. My how times have changed.
In the spring of 2016, my mother, daughter, and I loaded the car and headed north to visit family in a small midwestern town. As we neared the final leg of our journey, we noticed a lot of cows. "Mom," I cried, "can you do a quick search on your phone and see if there are any decent grocery stores around?"
My mother, who was more familiar with the area, took a breath and let out a caustic snicker. "Well," she gasped, pointing to a small sign above a tiny brick building, "there's always Steve's."
The sun was beginning to set when we stumbled across a refurbished IGA supermarket. "I haven't seen one of those in years," I whispered, recalling the time my brother got his ass handed to him after knocking over a shopping cart and breaking a dozen eggs. "Sit tight," I winked to my daughter who was staring at me in the rearview mirror, "I'll be back in a jiff."
When the doors opened, I was greeted by what appeared to be the surviving cast of Leave It To Beaver. Everyone was smiling uncomfortably and standing with perfect posture. It was a peculiar time warp, and I loved it.
The store's layout was identical to when I was a child. The aisles were narrow, the uniforms were aesthetically displeasing, and I swear the guy behind the meat counter was the same one who sliced our ham in 1973.
As I scanned the shelves for milk, I spotted Mikes's Hard Cranberry Lemonade. "Why not?" I thought. Anything would be better than whatever my brother had on tap, and it was one of my mother's favorites. I hurried back to the car, excited to share my investment.
"Check it out!" I cheered, parading the bottles before her. "They had cranberry!" But as I held it into the light, I noticed something strange. The liquid appeared to be a deeper shade of pink than normal. Instead of having a crisp, clear, vibrant color, it looked muddy and undrinkable.
Upon further examination, I noticed bold yellow text that read "+ Passion Fruit" to the right of the word cranberry. "Ew!" I mouthed to my mother, shaking the eerie substance in her face. "What the hell is plus passion fruit?" We looked at each other and again at the bottle. "Are you gonna drink this 'cause I sure won’t."
"Oh, hell no!" She winced, "Take it back."
The thoughts inside my head began to heat up. I had just driven eight hours with Betty White as a copilot and was ready to call it a day, and there I was, faced with the delicate task of returning cheap liquor. With an irked fist, I clutched the pink fuel, slammed the car door, and headed toward the service counter.
"Hello," I smiled, waving the rosy cocktails high. "I was just here and purchased these for my mother. I didn't realize they were passion fruit; she will never drink them, and I wondered..."
"I'm sorry," intruded a pinched-up shrew of a woman, "all liquor sales are final."
"Oh, that's fine,” I replied, assuring her I didn’t plan to return them. “I just wanted to exchange them for a different flavor."
Annoyed and unimpressed, she curled her face like a slice of fried bologna. "Um, we don't do that here," she pressed. "Once you leave the store, we cannot refund or exchange liquor sales."
"Seriously? But I was JUST here; look at the time stamp on my receipt!"
"I'm sorry," she insisted. "That's the law."
"The LAW?" *Laughs* "What is this, Mayberry? Are you like Barney Fife of the IGA world? It's not like I'm going to tell anyone."
"Sorry, ma'am. It's the law."
"Well, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," I groaned. "It's not the law in Georgia."
"Well, it's the law here," she demanded. "And we are not going to break it. Have a nice day."
When I opened the car door, my mother's eyes were ten feet wide. I was carrying the same six-pack of salmon-colored sludge I had when I went in, which was not how she raised me to handle business. "What happened?" she grimaced. "They wouldn't give you a refund?"
"It's against the law," I sighed.
"Are you kidding me? That's bullshit. GIVE ME THAT RECEIPT!"
I've known my mother for a long time. When she says, 'Give me that receipt,' it usually means someone's about to get fired. She wiggled her way out of the back seat, snatched the paper from my hand, and seized the six-pack of faux liquor. Then, without so much as a side-eye, she returned to the service counter to swap the unwanted refreshments for a more suitable flavor.
"Can we go inside and watch," asked a small voice from the back seat. "Oh honey," I grinned, "this is not something you need to see. Let's wait here and pray the police don't show up."
As time passed, I debated whether to call my mother to check on her. She had been missing in action for 15 minutes, and I was anxious to get back on the road. "Is that her?" I asked, squinting to zoom in on a woman near the entrance. "Yep, it sure is!" I said, "And she doesn't look too happy."
We watched in silence while sizing her up. She looked tired, defeated, and utterly pissed off as she made her way to the car—the infamous pink potion still intact. "So," I taunted through the crack in my window, "how'd that work out for you?"
The story, as retold by my daughter, goes something like this: "So, Grandma marched back into the store and demanded a full refund, but the lady wouldn't give her one. She said, 'once you step foot outside of IGA doors, it is illegal for us to refund your money!' But Grandma didn't believe her and asked if it was Ohio law or IGA law. Then Grandma asked her to call her manager, and the lady said, 'I AM the manager!' Then Grandma said, 'Well, then why doesn't it say that on your name tag, B-A-R-B-A-R-A?!!!!'"
When we returned home, my mother wrote a stern letter to the IGA president expressing her displeasure with their customer service team. A few months later, she received a corporate response confirming that it was, in fact, illegal to refund the sale of alcoholic beverages in Ohio. It was signed by a woman in upper management who happened to be named Barbara. You could technically make this shit up, but there's no need when your friends with my mother.
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