Pop Goes the AC

We order-in pizza about once a month. That is more frequent than it used to be, but we haven’t gone out as much since COVID (not that we were ever exactly gadabouts). During those early pandemic times, we did try ordering other meals via delivery, but we weren’t enthralled with the fare. Orders would get mixed up or come cold or whatever. Pizza has been reliable for us.

Ours comes with pop. There is no question about this. Ya gotta take your free pop. The app won’t me skip past this requirement  

Last month I chose orange. We still have it in the fridge. This month I chose cream soda. I wonder how long we’ll have that. I could order Pepsi, but I usually have my preferred Coke on hand, so it seems pointless.

Except for the very very occasional ginger ale, Sue doesn’t drink pop. While I do, it’s usually just Diet Coke. It feels good on my poor throat, but other soft drinks don’t seem to have the same effect.

Soft drinks have always appealed to me. I probably used them more when I drank neither coffee nor tea. While the normal world was getting their morning caffeine hit from coffee, I would get it from cola. Currently, I tend to open three cold cans per day because the cola makes my throat feel so good for some reason. I try to limit myself to only a half can at a time — sometimes less, sometimes more, but that’s a fair average.

I know that colas are not exactly a health food drink, but I figure that consuming only 1.5 cans per day isn’t too terrible, and I don't always drink even that much.

The foregoing palaver is all background to the memory that the above red cream soda evoked.

I was five or thereabouts and had tasted cream soda before, but it had come as a clear liquid. One day, I saw that someone had tossed a bottle containing a red solution on the front lawn. I couldn’t read then and didn’t know exactly what it was, but I could see that it was a soft drink. Besides that, red was favourite colour, so I figured that it had to be good. Excitedly, I brought it into Mom who did the taste test before passing the bottle to me.

I have another memory of Mom and soft drinks. We didn’t go with my father to church on Sunday evenings. It was almost an hour bus ride away, so Mom kept me home so that I would be perky for school. I don't know that it ever worked, but she tried her best. 

We’d often go for a walk on those evenings and would sometimes buy a bottle of Kik Cola to bring home as a treat, Kik being a local beverage company that is probably since long extinct.

Those are two early memories of my association with soft drinks. I don’t love them quite so much anymore, but there is still that throat issue that feels a little bit better with an ice cold Diet Coke passing over it.