Results tagged “bendystraws”

It's not that we must have bendy straws, it's that we can have them.

There are simpler ways. There is the "good enough" of a utiltitarian assistant, delivering your drink with no fuss. But also delivering it, and this is the important part, with no grace. It's not too much to ask that the implements of our daily routine aspire to elegance. It's not too selfish to hope for beauty.

And beauty there is. An undeniable elegance that can only come from a curve. From the satisfying knuckle-cracking sound of a straw bending to accommodate, striving to make the mundane transcendent. "No, no, you stay seated right there," the bendy straw insists. "I'll come over and bring the beverage to you!"

It's a disciplined and unassuming helpfulness that the flexible straw exhibits. Not the forced smile vainly attempting to mask the grimace of a self-consciously scraping sycophant, nor the bowed head and tremulously lowered tones of the resigned subservient. It's a tip of the hat and an affrimative nod. This straw's just here to make it easier to wet your whistle.

That's what we aspire to, isn't it? That we might make these few precious days together that much more pleasant, that we might ease the everday burdens of life by doing just a little more than we have to do. That wasn't so hard, was it? Especially since that coy and coquettish little helper had been lying stealthily in wait, in an unassuming plain white wrapper, not advertising its charms, not asking you to hurry and choose its advantages. Holding on to a pleasant little surprise, for only the reward of the sparkle in your eyes. It would still seem that , at least in some of the smaller details of life, true love does wait.

Of course, you can just get by. There's life, I'm told, without art, surrounded only by the functional and the blatant. But why live without the grace of an effortless articulation? We're given this world that we may hope for a straw that shows through the flex of its neck that it wants to kiss us back.

Is it a luxury? Maybe it would seem so to those bereft of that hunger for the sublime. But now that I've seen that even in this flawed world, I might maybe be met halfway... now I think my thirst has been quenched.

This is the thing: bendy straws are like little plastic tubes of unfulfilled promise. The articulation, the flexibility, that's the appeal, right? But is it such a hardship to lean in on a drink when you're sipping? Is it, you lazy bastard? Do you need that kink to give your drink some lateral motion? Is that really what it's all come down to?

They're deceptive in the wrapper, too. You don't know that's the bendy lurking in there. It could be a plain ole' straw. That bulging in the wrapper where the ridges lie waiting... it's too subtle. Offer me some extra-wrapper affordance of the threat of articulation lying within!

You know how many times I've unwrapped a bendy, gone for the thumb-on-the-end jamming it through the lid of the drink move, and had the business end go akimbo because I hadn't noticed it was a flexible straw and I was pushing the wrong end through the lid? Plenty. Straws, in my world, ought to be bidirectional. Orientation insensitive.

You know who bendy straw wants to be? That fucking loopy thing. The roller coaster straw made of heavy-grade plastic that required your mom to wash it out when you used it to drink milk because otherwise it would've gotten stinky from old milk. That's the real deal, Holyfield. That's where the money is in nonlinear pneumatic beverage delivery systems. Plus, you get to watch the fluid navigate the hydraulic system on its way to your greedy face. You have the option of reversing the flow, too, and watching your toxic carbon dioxide flow out through the straw, pushing the milk back, back, back, away, until you're making bubbles in the glass. That's fucking science right there.

So crane your neck, friend. Extend over the cup and get your giraffe on. Don't ask the straw to throw a jaunty dog leg in its path just to bring that drink closer, ever closer, to thee. Put some effort in. Sure, every once in a while, indulge in that bendy. Grab the ends and pull it to its full length, undo the accordian and revel in the potential. But don't get lazy, don't lose site of the fundamentals. Stick with the straight straw.