Sweet elixir of life!

May 8, 1886, at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Dr. John Stith Pemberton made the first batch of a new health tonic flavored with coca leaves. The mixture flopped as a tonic, but did pretty well as a soft drink. What do we call it? A: Coca-Cola. I have always loved Coke, used to drink it everyday till recently. It started when I was a child, my dad indulged me in crates of Coke, stacked side-by-side with his crates of beer. In a way its almost ironic that he has now become a teetotaler while his girls regularly knock back the alco (without falling asleep dead drunk like some people I know).

Anyway, back to Coke. Mum did an intervention upon discovering my addiction and promptly replaced one vice for another - boxes of chocolate milk! Granted it wasn't as bad as Coke but then I was the child who at age 4 finished, in a single sitting, an entire bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk which my godmum sent over from Australia - this was no pansy sized chocolate bar ok, you could knock somebody out cold with one of them. Reminds me of the time, on the advice of an aunt, mum started giving us spoonfuls Dom Benedictine every night. The Brat revolted but I was smiling after my dose. So smart mum continued the treatment for her and stopped it for me. Which might explain why she is the bigger kudikari (drunk) now. (Why are all my paragraphs ending with the reference to alcohol?)

So the chocolate milk fed the addiction for awhile until I went to high school. Somewhere along the line, the powers-that-be decided that teenagers could be responsible for their own dietary habits and allowed the acne-causing junk food heaven that was my canteen. This resulted in a nightly conversation of:

Mum: Did you have Coke today?
Me: No.
It was a white lie I tell you, designed to maintain the peace and serenity of home. Especially since somewhere along the line, my dad the creator of diabetic temptation, jumped on the health is wealth bandwagon! Weekends were hard but I'd get my 'treat' once in awhile. Then came uni. Far away from the prying eyes of my parents I indulged in all sorts of Coca-Cola fantasies. Every flavour (Coke Light yuck, Vanilla Coke yuck, Cherry Coke double yuck!!), every receptacle, if there was Coke in it I'd try it. Every single day. I even took my cough mixture with Coke - now that was some high!

Friends intervened with scary stories of how Coke can clean a toilet, rot a tooth and of dead bodies floating in Coke etc. Some of them canceled my order for a Coke when we ate together or else stole it from me. But despite the opposition, cries and gnashing of teeth, the love affair continues. Before you get preachy with me though, I have cut down on my consumption to about a can every 3-4 days. And most times I can't even finish it on my own. And please check here and here before you feed me your lies.

Cheers!