Junior Rylie Lawrence has a unique obsession for slushies. She challenged herself to drink 100 of them over the span of the summer; she wanted to see if she could drink that many in a short time frame.
Lawrence is lactose intolerant which limits her cold drink and cool down options. She does not like ice-es, snow cones, or smoothies. Along with this, she avoids pop because it hurts her stomach.
“To get that extra filler since I wasn’t drinking pop or anything else, I would drink slushies,” Lawrence said.
On one hot summer day, she bought a slushie from QuickTrip and came up with the challenge idea herself. She had not bought a slushie in a while and had forgotten about her love for them. This was her first slushie purchase of the summer challenge.
Lawrence took pictures each time she would purchase a slushie during her challenge and put it on Facebook or Instagram so that she could keep track of how many she had purchased.
“I would sometimes tag QuickTrip or Sonic and they would like it,” Lawrence said.
At first her parents thought the idea was stupid but once she reached about 50 they wanted her to keep going with it and reach her goal of 100.
Her friends were supportive too, and according to Lawrence the challenge basically turned into a form of bribery for them.
“My friends would be like ‘want to hangout’ and I’d be like ‘no’ and they’d be like ‘I’ll get you a slushie’ and I’d be like ‘oh okay’,” Lawrence said.
She typically buys slushies from QuickTrip, but other contenders are Sonic and 7-11. Her favorite flavors are blue raspberry, coke and watermelon.
“The guys at QuickTrip all know me,” Lawrence said, “They’ll ring me up when I walk in before I even get one.”
Midway through her challenge, Lawrence went to Super Summer–a church camp in Salina–for a week where she was unable to purchase slushies. She admitted she was going through a phase of withdrawals during that time period.
“Our youth pastor had to stop the whole bus on the way home so that I could get a slushie,” Lawrence said.
Lawrence fell slightly short of her goal of drinking 100 slushies; finishing the summer with a total of 92.
“To see how close I was and I didn’t accomplish it, yes, I was upset,” Lawrence said. “But now my goal is to see how many I can get by the end of the year.”
During the school year, Lawrence still tries to buy slushies whenever she gets the opportunity. She buys one about every week or every two weeks.
“It’s gotten to the point where if I’m upset or if I had a bad day, my mom asks if she needs to bring me home a slushie,” Lawrence said, “Or she’ll surprise me with one if I’m sick.”
Considering that a small slushie is a $1.19 at QuickTrip, Lawrence thinks she has spent about $300 on slushies in the past six months. Meaning that about $110 of that was from this summer alone. She does not regret spending that much money on slushies because it “is just pocket change,” but as it adds up now Lawrence realizes thats a lot of money.
She recently attempted to do 7-11’s challenge where you buy seven slushies in seven days and you 11 free, but it was hard for her to get there and back since there is not a 7-11 in Gardner.
Lawrence has also tried creating her own blue raspberry slushie at home with snow-cone flavoring but it did not turn out well because she could not get the ice exactly right.
“It’s not like the real deal,” Lawrence said jokingly.
Although she couldn’t see herself opening a Slushie-Shop or anything like that in the future she admits she will continue to buy slushies when she can. She strongly believes she will never get tired of drinking them and that her life would be very different if she had not discovered her love for slushies.
“It has honestly made me grow relationships with people because they want to know about it,” Lawrence said, “And it’s forced me to talk to and meet new people.”