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Maurice, though, had never drunk alcohol in his life.

There was really no reason why. People offered him drinks plenty of times and he always politely refused with the simple reply,

“No thanks. I’m abstaining until marriage or 2050 A.D…whichever comes first.”

Maurice thought long and hard about this and believed his refusal of alcohol was a subconscious rejection of something else entirely. That is, beer and wine were a metaphor for some innate hated thing that wronged him in his formative years. In this, Id and Ego agreed.

“What could it be,” he thought. “Is it grapes?”

Grapes were not his favorite fruit. They looked good on the outside, but were soft and mushy in the middle. And there was always that infernal seed lurking inside that ruined any hope of a joyful culinary experience. But seedless grapes existed. He loved seedless grapes.

“Could it be the yellow jackets that built their paper homes in my parent’s vineyards?”

That didn’t seem right either. He brooded more over the situation.

“Seeds, yellow jackets, paper houses, cheap houses, trailer park ’houses’, purple trailer park houses, seedy houses, back to the infernal seeds again, mushy middles…” Something sinister lurked in man’s history concerning the purple fruit of the vine.

“Vine, whine, wine…”

Martin Luther said, “He who loves not wine, women, and song remains a fool his whole life long.”

“Perhaps I should drink wine,” he said aloud and rather quickly. “Was it not Pliny the Elder who said, “In wine there is truth.” And truth be told he was on a life-long search for truth.