The Beer CANundrum

My friends and I have this hobby we like to refer to as “Sitting Out On The Patio Drinking Beer”, which involves sitting out on the patio, drinking beer. We do this quite frequently. And we, being men who drink beer frequently, can drink a lot. So that you’ll know what a lot is, let me tell you what a lot is. When Siege shows up with a 30-pack, he sets it next to the 30-pack Two-Step brought home when she went by the Target’s earlier. So we have sixty beers in the SpaceFridge, which is a pretty good amount. Between the four of us – that’s Two-Step, Stout, Siege and me – that’s about fifteen beers apiece. I’m not saying we drink all sixty in one night. But I’m also not saying we don’t.

See, sometimes, Haycomet and Byron, Fletcher and Julie, Rines and TL, Bill and Amanda – sometimes they come by too. And sometimes they all come over. Sometimes Captain McRight will even come by. What I’m getting at here is that when that many people come over, sixty beers split twelve ways suddenly isn’t that much beer. We’re talking somewhere around five apiece. You know what that means? It means someone’s making a beer run. We’ve been known to drink as many as two 30-packs and a case in one night between our group. On a typical weekend, we go through an average of around 130 beers or so. That’s a lot of damn beer.

Now I’m not saying this to brag; in fact it’s quite the opposite. I want to illustrate to you the great number of chances we get at shots on goal. You see, when we finish a can of beer, it immediately gets crushed beneath the foot, then tossed at the trash can we set up within reach of everyone. Everyone does it. Everyone drinks quite a bit of beer. So everyone gets a lot of beer cans to shoot. And no one gets any better.

After three or four months of drinking three or four nights a week, you would think one of us would have by now risen to the top. One of us, or hell – all of us! – would have improved our shot by now. Practice makes perfect, right? Well you all know me, I’m not very good at basketball. Well you might not know that, because I never ever talk about it, because, well, I suck at it. Nothing much to say there. But it’s obvious why I can’t hit the trash can. But it’s not obvious to me why I can’t get better at it! I get a lot of practice! We all do! And we all suck so bad that we feel like giving up and just drinking. I’m attaching a picture of one of the trash cans on the morning after an easy night. I think we only drank about 20 beers last night. But if you look closely, you can count the number of cans that are not in the trash can. It’s an embarrassing figure. And let me be honest: those are the ones we didn’t walk by and toss in. Sometimes if they’re in the middle of the path to the next round, they’ll get taken care of quickly.

Wow, we're badIt’s ridiculous that our practice doesn’t make us any better, but we have learned to embrace it. We now celebrate our greatness by pounding our chests and raising our fists in the air every time we miss. We used to throw high-fives, but it got ridiculous, having to stand up and high-five every time we missed. As a human being there are only so many times in your life you can actually get up out of a chair. Just like a garage door opener. It’s only going to open so many times. Well, we don’t want to stand that often. So now we just sort of salute. Even that’s getting old though, because it feels like our hands are in constant motion.

This is obviously something we need to get better at. We’re not going to stop drinking. Ha! We’re not going to stop throwing our cans in the trash. No way! We drink, we dispose of the can properly. But seriously? It would be nice not to have to bend over and pick up ninety-percent of the cans we tossed. Good lord, can we be any more white?

So friends, I think we may be coming up with some new ideas that deal with how to handle the massive amount of cans we go through. Now it cannot involve just walking by the trash can and dropping it in. That’s no fun. And since we do so much and so many a night, we want to make it exciting. This is our little contest, you see. But what else is there to do? Well I now turn to you, oh faithful reader. Lend us a hand. Give us your ideas on how to either dispose of the cans in a better but still celebratory fashion, or help us get better. Please. We’re getting desperate. And my back just can’t take all that bending over to clean up anymore. I’m getting too old for it.

This Post Has 14 Comments

  1. somebody set up us

    Here’s what you do, Space: put a large trash can out there somewhere with a backboard made of old beer cartons on it. That way it’s still fun, and you have a better chance to improve. And there’s a whole lot less cleanup after the fact.

    Now I noticed you’re drinking Natural Light, which I would advise against at all costs. Come on, Space, you should know that will make your aim worse!

    Real beer only comes in bottles.

  2. Catina

    Get one of those old people grabber things. You know, the long stick with the pinchers on the end. Then you can, either, use them to reach the can from your chair or you can use them to pick up the missed shots.

  3. Space, I thought you told me that the point was to miss. If you really want us to sink them, then we should each get a beer can zip line from our chairs to the trashcan. When we have an empty, we’ll just crunch the can, attach it to the zip line, and slide it down the line. It will hit the wall above the can, drop off the line, and fall directly into the can. Bam! 2 Points!

  4. Space

    I like somebody set up us’s idea about the enhanced backboard. That might work. But glass-bottled beer puts a damper in our efforts. I don’t want broken glass all over my patio.

    I’m not terribly fond of old people grabbers. Why would I want to grab old people?

    No, Hay, the point is not to miss. We just started celebrating the miss since we missed so vastly many more than we made. If we celebrated when we made it, we’d never get to celebrate.

    But how would we get back and forth to the fridge with all the zip lines running between our chairs?

    :raise:

  5. Okay, just one zip line to one chair, and after about 10-20 empties, we’ll take turns sitting in that chair. You seem to have an unCANny knack of figuring things out. You CAN do it!

  6. Space

    Sigh. Must you, Hay? Why don’t we just build a CANtraption to take care of it? I’ll be burning both ends of the CANdle trying to design it. It shall be the bane of my existence… (get ready for it…) …my CANcer.

    Okay I feel better. I CAN’t let you have all the pun.

  7. Well, don’t CANcel out my idea of the zip line. It would be awesome! And yes, I must, I can’t help it.

  8. Space

    All right, we’ll give it a shot this weekend. I got the new Fine Young CANnibals album we can listen to. So bring your CANtankerous husband out and we’ll make it happen.

  9. I’ve been mulling this missing thing over for some time and I think I may have stumbled upon the answer. Our goal has no net. There it is simple as that. You add a net and whammo you start making shots. See it’s all about the focal center. All we’re seeing is an open hole. We need a heigth ratio to figure in. So anyway we need to figure out how to attach a net to the trash can.

  10. Siege

    I’ll get my welder out of storage. It’s time to build something.

  11. Catina

    cant you just use a baby swimming pool for the can and then put a backboard on it. if you increase the “hittable” space wouldn’t it increase your chances of making it?

  12. Catina

    dangit you need an edit option on here… I want you to use a baby swimming pool as the trash can.

  13. Siege

    I am working on the apparatus. The only things holding it up now are weather and .. being elsewhere. If I had an indoor workshop, it would be done – but theres only so much I can do in the spacious, palatial back yard of the SpacePad.

Leave a Reply