Petite Confessions by Vicki Lesage (chrysanthemum read aloud TXT) 📕

In college, I was one classy chick.

After a long day of playing teacher’s pet in World Geography and Differential Equations, I’d head out with the gang to one of the numerous keg parties in my small university town of Columbia, Missouri. While my fellow co-eds handed over $5 in exchange for a red plastic cup and all the beer they could drink, I brought my own wine.

And wine glass.

Told you I was classy.

Drunken students surrounded me, slamming lukewarm beers while I sipped daintily from my black-stemmed glassware, made out of actual, breakable glass.

I suppose I should specify that this fancy glass came from Walmart and my fancy wine came from a box.

Further adding to the class factor, I mixed the wine with Fanta into order to be able to chug it alongside my beer-drinking companions during drinking games. They’d make trips to the keg, I’d pull my two-liter bottle of mixed deliciousness from my oversized purse and fill ’er up.

Round after round of Drinking Jenga, Kings, Golf, or Quarters, my lips and teeth would grow more and more stained with the syrupy concoction, drawing even more attention to my bizarre choice of drink.

“Ooh, you’re drinking red wine?” an intrigued beer drinker would ask.

“How could you tell?” I would respond with a burgundy-tinted grin.

“Um… no reason. Could I have a taste?”

“Sure,” I’d say, proffering my glass. “But just to warn you, it’s carbonated. With Fanta.”

At this, the partygoer would instantly retreat and I’d be left in peace with what remained of my two liters of weirdness.

So you can imagine the culture shock when I moved from the Midwest to Paris. As in France. Where the naked ladies dance.

I enjoyed a good French wine, sure, but I secretly enjoyed my low-class wine cocktails, too.

How would I survive life in the City of Light? I would never blend in if I insisted on blending my vin with soda.

During college I could explain away my drink preferences as a budget issue—mixing the wine made it last longer and didn’t cost as much. But as a 20-something girl on her way to Paris, I’d had to leave the mixed wine concoctions at home.

Sniff.

I poured a little boxed-wine-mixed-with-soda out for my homeys before packing my bags and heading overseas.

Turns out, I was able to get over my unusual cocktail preference pretty quickly.

As soon as I arrived in France, Parisians welcomed me with open arms. Arms holding bottles of delicious Syrahs and Cabernets and Pinot Noirs that didn’t need to be mixed or chugged or made to suffer any other horrible treatment.

Notice I said “bottles.” Because of course there wasn’t a box in sight.

I drank plenty of amazing French wines over the years. Which led to its own set of problems (that’s a whole other story—a whole other book, actually), but at least no one ever had to know about my boxed-wine-soda-drinking past.

Until now.