7/11 Slurpee suicide July 11 is like a holiday for anyone that's a fan of sweet, slightly frozen drinks, getting things for free, and a combination of the previous two subjects. Every July 11 convenience mega-chain 7/11 gives out free cups of its beloved frozen beverages, Slurpees, in celebration of the calendar date that matches the company name. Smart branding, 7/11, smart branding. I grew up fascinated by the idea of a Slurpee and probably thought about the drink more than I actually ever had it. I still recall the first time I went to get one was in conjunction with a promotional campaign for a new line of Slurpee-related straws--the brain-freeze, which was basically a slightly higher-quality straw that ran through a plastic, purple brain trapped inside a clear plastic box representing an ice cube. I saw the pictures of that and wanted one. Yes, 7/11 had me pegged, as well as any other boy with a strange fascination for cartoonish figures of grotesque things--so, probably every other dude my age. The Slurpee and 7/11 go hand in hand, both representing the other, both inexorably linked and exist as a small part of the broad illustration of American suburbia--and pretty much everywhere else that the stores line the streets. It sometimes feels as if these cookie-cutter stores played an important role during various memorable moments during my life, like the first time I bought lottery tickets back in high school, which also happened to be the first time I won any money off a lottery ticket ($7!). Such memories sound trivial, but those moments of walking into a slightly dirty convenience store on a hot evening and getting hit with a blast of arctic air conditioning on the way to purchasing a lottery ticket or something else are reminders of a coming of age process everyone experiences regardless of what location they end up in. A relatively small amount of that ever happened at a 7/11, but it's hard not to link those stores in the memory of running about suburban D.C. late at night just before college. Right after graduating college I ended up spending an entire summer without much to do in Boston, waiting for my year-long year of service as an AmeriCorps VISTA to begin, spending the days wandering around town on foot, or painting a gigantic mural with friends, or catching up on leisurely reading I missed out on in college. On July 11 of that year I hit up probably four different 7/11s around the city in various parts of Boston, gulping down the little amount of liquid that fits in those 7.11 oz cups and valiantly trekking on to a new location with whatever friend I'd convinced to join me for that particular moment. These days my time is again mine, but things are a little different as a full-time freelancer. I'm in charge of my schedule, but there's an odd balance at work that sometimes creates a bit of friction when it comes to accomplishing work. There are two opposing feelings of the day's movement: On the one hand there's all the time in the world to do anything, on the other there's the feeling that there are only so many hours in the day to spend on work, play, and relaxing. It's quite easy to encounter these two disparate ideas at the same time, which can either produce great feelings of anxiety that the time isn't being spent properly or can be a great motivating factor to get a lot done. Sometimes it's difficult to get away from the computer for even a fraction of the work day for fear of not doing work, so the idea of taking a quick excursion to 7/11 for a free Slurpee, while tempting, seemed out of the question earlier in the day. After the regular work day ended and a chunk of work got put to sleep I felt comfortable making my way to 7/11 to grab a free drink to celebrate completing another batch of work. I wasn't the only person who had the same thought, and the line at my local 7/11 reached the doorway, where the owners posted a note quickly scrawled onto a sheet of paper that read "only 10 people at a time" to line up for Slurpees. The line moved quickly--after all, the free cups are tiny--but that also meant not much time to select what to drink. I went with what some call a suicide, which is a combination of different beverages one often finds at a soda fountain. This being a Slurpee machine (and most Slurpee machines have soda-based beverages), the idea is the same. I tossed in a bunch of a mango drink, a bit of a lemon liquid, and a tiny amount of some red drink that might have been watermellon but was so watered down it's hard to recall. It all went so fast it's difficult to recall the whole thing, other than that it hit just right in the middle of a mildly hot day. Oh, and the brainfreeze. There's always a brainfreeze.