TIP! Your elbow and wrist are magical!
It turns out, it IS possible to drink without straws!
Somewhere along the line, we became super used to drinking straws as a ubiquitous companion to cold drinks. In to-go cups of iced lattes, sure. There’s an argument for that, although better packaging could almost certainly be come up with.
But in restaurants, when you’re sitting down with two capable hands (scratch that, you only need one capable hand) in front of a glass of ice water, and a server mechanically puts a straw in front of you…here is your tip.
Say, “No, thanks! I don’t need a straw.”
Then, grasp your drink with one hand (preferably your right, as that’s etiquette for whatever reason), lift it carefully up to your lips using your elbow joint, then use your wrist joint to tip it slowly towards your mouth. Rest the lip of the glass against your own lip and drink the cool, refreshing drink right down.
Oh, don’t get all miffed. If you positively need a drinking straw to make your iced tea experience that much better, go for it. But I bet the majority of us do not care, and if we all encourage our servers to offer straws by request only, we can reduce straw usage.
We currently go through five MILLION straws per day. News flash: these babies usually do not get recycled, and plastic just sits around on the planet–on beaches, in the Pacific, and in our local landfills. Let’s save that space for the stuff we really need.
So celebrate the elbow and the wrist, and do without a useless plastic thing.
-
Recommend this
on Facebook -
Report an error
-
Subscribe to our
Weekly Digest
Susan Howson
Susan Howson is managing editor for this very website. She writes THE BEST bios.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.