Free Porter by Laurence Dahners

5
                  Porter              
     
     
    Porter
     
    By
     
    Laurence E Dahners
     

Allie Dans formed her first “ port ” shortly after she turned eleven .
    She was at her cousin Mindy’s birthday party . It was a hot summer day and Aunt Stella hotfooted it across the burning pool deck to hand Allie and Mindy each a glass of icy Kool-Aid. In the humidity, the glass was sweating nearly as much as Allie was and she bowed her strawberry blonde head over it in puzzlement . “How does the water get to the outside of the glass?”
    With a puzzled tone h er aunt posited , “Maybe t he heat make s the glass leaky.”
    “For God’s sake Stella!” Allie’s dad said without opening his eyes behind his sunglasses. “It’s condensation! The cold condenses water on to the glass!”  He laid his head back against the deck recliner and adjusted the brim of his hat to cover his eyes again .
    Not knowing what “condensation” was, Allie thought to herself that her dad’s explanation wasn’t at all helpful , big word s but a complete lack of enlightenment . She didn’t want to ask her dad about it and thereby get a long and complicated elucidation though . Everybody thought her Dad was a genius , but he had a tendency to explain things in such detail that they became even more confusing than they were to begin with .
    Still thinking about it, s he squinted and pictured a tiny tunnel through the glass, from the Kool-Aid on the inside to the air on the outer surface. As she visualized it, to her astonishment a big drop welled up on the surface of the glass, right where she was imagining the hole ! During her moment of startlement , the drop stopped growing , but it then resumed growing and began dribbl ing when she concentrated on it again . E ventually it became a steady stream. After a moment, the level of Kool-Aid in the glass fell to the level of Allie’s “hole” and the stream slowed down and stopped. Allie picked up the glass and tasted the dribble. Yep, Kool-Aid. She tasted the other tiny drops covering the rest of the glass – they were just water.
    Allie took a sip and looked over at Mindy. Mindy was raising her glass to her lips. Allie focused on Mindy’s glass and was rewarded with a dribble down Mindy’s chin. “Ew!” Mindy set the glass down and wiped her chin , staring suspiciously at the rim of the glass and running her finger over it. She wiped sticky fingers on the table top with distaste. Then she brightened, “Let’s get in the pool! ”
     
    The next night, when the Dans family sat down to dinner, Allie looked at the condensation on the surface of a glass the iced tea her mom had just served . Remembering, s he held the glass up over her plate and pictured a tunnel through the bottom of the glass – sure enough the bottom of the glass began to drip onto her plate when she formed the port.
    She looked over at her dad. He had brought a paper to the dinner table and was studying it. His reading at the dinner table always made Mom mad , but he did it a lot anyway . He lifted his glass. Allie made a port just behind the lip and giggled as she saw tea run down his chin. “What the hell?!” he swore , setting the glass down and reaching for a napkin. He looked suspiciously over at Allie who was desperately trying to stifle a giggle. Then he examined the glass . It was one of their regular glasses. It didn’t have a convoluted surface like dribble glasses have. In fact, it had a perfectly smooth, one could say “glassy , ” surface. “What the hell?!” he repeated and looked at Allie again. “Did you do that somehow?”
    With her hand over her mouth, Allie giggled a little more while nodding her head.
    He looked back at the glass, running a finger over its surface below the rim, both inside and outside. Puzzled, he asked, “How?”
    “I just made a leak like Aunt Stella said.”
    “What?”
    “Well, she said ‘the heat makes the glass leaky.’ You said it was