The Oreo Chocolate Redundancy
There’s no excuse for this.
There’s an explanation for it -- namely, that it was 5pm on a Saturday and I was obliterated, and in my compromised state I believed that all the Oreo flavors (save Oreo+Caramel) were still on the to-do list, just a big creamy black expanse of choco-chunk milkshake flavors, waiting for us to quaff them -- but that is not an excuse.
There is nothing excusable about this. After all, I’m the only one on our growing list of contributors that has double-dipped on the shot club list before. Last time, the redundant flavor was Strawberry, and I got it the second time because a cashier recommended it to me. That time, at least I was following the rules. I asked for his favorite flavor, he gave me his favorite flavor, it was a flavor I’d already had, and I gritted my rapidly decaying teeth and immersed them in the shake’s pink, saccharine, lipidy surface.
This time, I just screwed up. Oreo + Chocolate is already a redundant flavor in its own right -- Oreo is, after all, primarily chocolate (followed by trans fats) -- and now, this excessive decadence has to besmirch our shot club list twice. And that’s not the only disappointing fact about this trip. Oh, no.
See, I was so giddy with day-drunk Bloody Marys that now I can barely articulate the phenomenology of eating this freaking shake. Or of eating the food that I ordered, which was undoubtedly mediocre, though rendered irresistible through the sheer power of drunkness. Everything I got was eaten hastily, in a delirious, desperate state, without much attention paid to basic decency of mouthfeel or flavor -- which is to say, this Sonic visit was as close to an ideal or typical Sonic visit as someone like me will ever get.
Behold the spread in all of its glory. The offensive redundant shake, gulped down thoughtlessly, with only a passing observation of, hey, they don’t just have Oreo pieces in here, but actual Oreo cream chunkles too! The sad, unseasoned, un-gussied-up $1.49 chicken sandwich, a paltry replacement for Sonic’s former “Little Chickies” menu item, which is still advertised in the store and on Sonic’s in-house radio, but which has been discontinued. And the coup de grace, a new Sonic item proudly declared on all of its signage -- the wings.
There are a lot of wing flavors to be got. Garlic Parm. Sweet Asian. Buffalo. A couple others I don’t remember. And I have a longstanding history of drunkenly eating wings in the fall while football blares on from a peripheral TV (as was happening in the Sonic that day). I did go to a Big 10 school after all. Wings are my favorite part of sports. Wings are my favorite part of being drunk. So I ordered a six-piece of Garlic Parm and settled in, kind of excited at the possibility. This was a mistake. But what can I say, I was drunk.
These are not wings. These are white meat nugs breaded some time eons ago, frozen and transported across thousands of miles, and baked in an oven in some dark corner of Sonic that somehow takes 22 minutes to access. After baking and breading the nugs, they are spooged on with some kind of greasy viscous flavor liquid, which is probably compositionally very similar to what flavors the shakes.
Wings do not have thick, almost calcified breading. Wings are dark meat (okay, some boneless wings are not) and have been fried, not baked. Wings are absolutely suffused with flavor, not drizzled with barely seasoned lube. These are not wings. These are just Sonic’s chicken poppers with anal leakage on them.
I ate these guys fast. I couldn’t put them down. They attained that perfect balance of salty, fatty, carby, and protein-y that makes the taste buds of any drunk person sing. I looked at the Ohio State game on the TV and shoveled that crap into my mouth and made it disappear in like a minute, probably. Then, still hankering, I turned my soul-sucking maw towards the shake, and also made it vanish in a matter of moments.
What was over in a span of five minutes went on to give me throbbing stomach pain for the whole rest of the day.
The Sonic Shot Club list is dwindling. The same day that I inhaled a redundant and pointless and not-good Oreo Choc shake, Ida knocked the coveted Oreo Peanut butter off the list. I suspect she hates these fucking shakes more than me (she seems like she eats healthy most of the time and gives a shit about life), and yet she’s whipping through the club at a rate I can’t match. She’s racing towards oblivion and I’m grinding my gears.
And I’m the one who makes the update shot list posts, crossing off the completed items.
Ugh omg dammit fuck good lord fuck no ugh
It’s Monday and I’m sober, except for the 16 oz of coffee buzzing through my body, making me type too quickly and think too deeply about the myriad small mistakes I’ve made in my life. I’ve doomed the shot club list, giving us an unbalanced number. I’ve doomed myself to eat more shakes than originally planed. I regret many things.
I do not regret the Sonic Shot Club enterprise, though. It’s given me valuable writing fodder, myriad moments of introspection, pages and pages of food-infotainment, and new friends. Plus, hey, maybe some of the proceeds from this garbagepile food order maybe kind of helped out some kids:
Actually, now that I’m reading the bag more closely, it looks like it’s only Limeade purchases that go to Learning
