The other night we dined at our local Red Robin. Each time, before walking through the door, I promise myself I’m not going to take them up on their unlimited offer of Strawberry Freckled Lemonade and accompanying straws. Because of all the calories each unit packs, inwardly I know that by partaking of this All-you-can-drink offer, I will die a premature death.

But as soon as I sit down and open the menu, I’m a dead man.

As a lifelong Mormon, I’ve tried to adhere to our faith’s Word of Wisdom. I know it’s a good thing since I’ve watched far more than one friend suffer and die because they let alcohol, tobacco or drug addiction take them down the road to the morgue.

I’m glad to have been raised in the church. Without it, I’m pretty sure I would have ended up on that same cold slab after trekking down that same long and winding road. There are also a bunch of other reasons that I’m grateful for my church membership. These are also usually dismissed in a split second without careful consideration.

When I walk into a Red Robin, all bets are off. The Word of Wisdom takes a back seat to unlimited freckled lemonades and the beckoning Whiskey Burger that is so beautifully pictured on the menu.

So against my better judgement last Thursday, I ordered the old standbys. However, when the first round of drinks landed, I noticed there was no straw.

I have to have a straw for several reasons. A plastic straw is essential to stir and pulverize the strawberries. It is also impossible to suck the berries off the bottom of the glass with your lips alone.

In fact, if you don’t have a straw, you shouldn’t be calling them strawberries. If the straw is missing, the berries don’t get strawed and just lay lifeless at the bottom of the glass. Since cubes of ice make up 90% of the contents of the glass, the berries never make it to the top. Unless I have a straw.

Another good reason for the straw is so you don’t have to stick your lips on the glass that may or may not have been washed clean from the germs and diseases of the hundreds of thousands of glass lickers before you. Without the straw, I might as well just walk around the restaurant and lock lips with all the other patrons, no matter what communicable diseases they are packing. Mustaches, cold sores, rotten teeth, lipstick, and other maladies have been present on those same glass edges.

I want my straw.

Since I couldn’t get the attention of our waitress, I got up from our table and went on safari for a straw. I finally trapped another waitress in her cash register cubicle and asked for a straw. She told me that they were no longer getting straws by the truckload and there were none available. She handed me a fork and told me to stir it up with that.

I sat down and tried to manhandle the forkberries. Didn’t work. It’s just not the same and I can’t suck the bottom-dwelling berries up with a fork.

About then our waitress appeared and I demanded a straw. She informed me that the reason for the sudden straw shortage was the libbers on the west side had passed a law that they could not longer give out straws. The Dems were trying to copy the California liberal kings who previously had passed no-straw laws.

In fact, according to her, the WA legislature has created a $60 fine every time a Red Robin or anyone else hands out a one-cent straw without being asked for one. It seems the oceans are getting filled with plastic and this is their way of cleaning up the problem.

I’m sure by fall they’ll have straw police running around watching everybody’s drinking glass.

However, on the very morning of our RR visit, I read that the US contributes a very small amount of the plastic in the ocean. Something less than 5%. And in the USA ocean-going plastic, a minuscule amount like .002% is made up of straws. As usual, they’ve totally missed the mark.

Straw hoax

And since I’m tirading, the liberals are way off on another one of their up-to-the-minute blame games. They love to affix every problem that pops up around us on global warming. However, the very policies they have pushed have created this firestorm.  I’ll say no more.

The real reason for so many fires