"So, you teach home economics?" Harold asked. "And you're a man, right?"

"I'm not sure what you're saying," Ted replied as he stirred the boiling pot of sugar water. "I don't teach anything, but yeah I'm a guy."

Harold adjusted his glasses. "Not too bright? Well, maybe you could be a home ec teacher. That or...ugh...an art teacher."

"You know this isn't a school, right?" Ted pointed out.

Maybe it wasn't the nicest thing to point out. Ted felt like this middle aged man was very confused, and maybe even in denial. But, he may have been a little irritated by him. Not to mention how he reminded him of every annoying authority figure he had ever dealt with.

Harold rolled his eyes. "Right, you're one of those ones aren't you?"

"One of what?" Ted asked.

"One of those hippy loving, free spirit, no discipline educators that insists it's a learning institution, not a school." Harold complained.

Yeah, Ted thought Harold was absolutely the personification of the worst parts of school.

"I'm not..." Ted was going to argue, but he sighed and shook his head. It wasn't worth it.

He looked up from his boiling liquid to Harold and tried to change the subject. "So, do you drink much? Have a favorite kind of alcohol? Beer? Wine? Whiskey?"

Harold raised an eyebrow. "Are you trying to bribe me?"

"Bribe? I don't...No. Why would I try to bribe you?" Ted asked, flabbergasted.

Harold shook his head. "Now now." Harold said condescendingly, "No need to worry that I've seen through your ruse. There is a reason I'm in charge after all."

"That's not..."

"And of course I'm not against greasing the wheels to make things go smoother." He interrupted. "So if you do plan a bribe, I'm particular to Port."

"Why are you..." Ted stopped himself. "Wait, port wine, right?"

Harold nodded. "A good Port, now that's the drink of a man of intellect. I do prefer dry, but there is something warming about a classic sweeter port."

Ted rubbed his chin and nodded. "Fortified wine, huh?"

"Fortified? What are you on about?"

"Port," Ted explained. "It's a wine that you add distilled wine to. Or I guess, it's called brandy then I think?"

"Huh? That's all it is?" Harold asked in clear surprise. "Just wine with wine added to it?"

"I mean, you can think about it that way I guess." Ted shrugged as he hit the wooden spoon against the top of the pot to keep as much liquid as possible into the mixture.

He balanced the spoon on top of the pot and turned around to face Harold. "So the idea of Port is to keep it sweeter, but make it more alcohic. To do that, you distill wine to concentrate the alcohol content in it, right? Then you make another wine. You stop that wine from finishing fermenting early so that there's more sugar left in the drink. Then you mix in the distilled wine from earlier. That way you end up with a more alcoholic wine that's also sweeter."

Ted chuckled. "Kind of like cheating the system to get everything out of a single drink."

"I...I didn't know that..." Harold grumbled. "But, that doesn't sound all that fancy, just mixed wine."

"I mean, most alcohol isn't really that fancy when you think about it." Ted replied. "At its core, all alcohol is just fermented sugar water."

"Yeah, that doesn't really help me feel better about it." He grumbled.

Ted smiled. He wouldn't admit it out loud, but it felt good to sort of dash his ideas of what a fancy drink was. Especially when it seemed that he liked port as a status symbol more than actually enjoying it.