For Love of Corona

I haven’t had a good Corona with lime in a while. I was thinking about this on the way in from work, remembering my time in Okinawa. While on deployment there during my time in the USMC, we only had two types of beer available to us: Miller and Schlitz.

Miller is an interesting beer. If you’ve ever drank too much beer and had to throw up, that taste you have in your mouth after vomiting is exactly identical to Miller. For this reason, I do not drink Miller beer. It is, (to me), vomit. Of course one could easily say that this is a specific mental response associated with the memory of an incident where one has gone through a particularly distasteful incident with that particular substance, but I don’t agree. As I recall, the first time I drank Miller, my thought was immediately the same – as in “this tastes like puke!” It wasn’t that I got sick on Miller, it’s that it reminded me of getting sick previously. Hence forth, I have always perceived Miller beer as tasting like puke.

For me, the only option was to get used to Schlitz. I should add that this was also the first time in my experience where vending machines actually sold beer. You don’t see this much in the States, but in Japan beer vending machines (along with all sorts of other objects) were commonplace. But, while I did get used to the taste of Schlitz malt liqueur beer, (and it does still bring back fond memories), I prefer light somewhat skunky Mexican beers more. Why? I suppose that’s a memory as well.

Corona with lime reminds me of Tijuana and the semi-fun times we had there. It also reminds me of San Diego and the beach at Coronado. The sun, the sand, the surf. The bowling! We spent a lot of time at the bowling alley in Coronado drinking Coronas. I’m an unpredictable bowler. I never know what I’m going to get when I throw a ball. About fifty percent of the time I can hit a strike. The rest of the time the ball goes wild. We also drank Coronas on the San Onofre and San Clemente beaches. Those are wonderful places to hang out and relax. Just the smell of a Corona with lime reminds me of the beach. We didn’t drink Schlitz at the beach if we could help it. No, the beach is for lighter beers with that lime taste. Schlitz is more like an indoor beer for when you’re trapped somewhere you don’t want to be.

Weird how the taste of certain things gets associated with specific places and specific things. I suppose it’s a scent memory. But now, when I’m stuck inside and its raining and miserable like it is now, I can have a Corona and remember better times.

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