My Mountain Dew addiction

I am sure a good portion of my life was wasted due to my high intake of Mountain Dew. How was I supposed to know the stuff could practically kill you or was known to make folks grow a third nipple? (Perhaps the radioactive looking color should have been my first clue) It wasn’t until Jolt came out that I discovered that my caffeine intake was the equivalent to that of folks who drank 6 cups of coffee a day. I remember the news reports saying things like “you thought Jolt has a lot of caffeine, well Mountain Dew trumps Jolt” and that I in fact wasn’t immune to coffee, I was just equally addicted as I was in denial.

I am quick to deny a connection between my intake of Mountain Dew and my extreme sports attitude. I was very into extreme sports, even though I never categorized myself as particularly extreme — despite, launching myself off of roofs and other 10 foot high ledges with my bike to the horror of people passing below — parents walking with their kids and to the delight of others — random Asian tourists, although I kind of think Asian tourists will take a picture of anything they deem as “cool” or “American”.

Was I duped by the extreme sports marketing teams that told me how extreme Mountain Dew was? Or was I just into the flavor? I like to think the latter, after all, I had no brand loyalty – I would buy generic brand mountain dew two liter bottle for 59 cents a piece and chug straight out of those. Although I thought Mountain Dew was best out of cans, I could be seen at the skatepark with a one liter bottle as a hydrating supply. I never drank water unless I was forced to because I was staying at one of those houses that forbade soda – kind of like the house I grew up in.

Maybe my soda addiction was a natural rebellion against the seltzer intensive house that I was brought up in. My father never bought soda and he practically cursed its existence since according to him it was “drek”. We didn’t drink water though, we weren’t one of those families. I can specifically remember “those” families, the water families, the type of families that didn’t serve the drinks until the middle of the meal and I couldn’t figure out why. Those families that had dinner together and the kids knew to place the napkins on their laps, water families also tended to be the types to serve milk as well, I felt like they were those types of families from TV where dinner always seemed to be perfect.

While I didn’t quit soda until my mid 20’s, I never became militantly anti-soda. Although for some reason when girls drink diet soda it’s a huge turnoff, I have become someone I never thought was possible – a serial water drinker! I have enough water in my car for someone to mistake me as some sort of white supremacist survivalist type and the second I find an empty bottle it goes right to the tap. I have an assortment of bottle types I like and they just keep getting refilled until I can taste the plastic (apparently plastic will kill ya – which may an issue since everything I own is made of plastic)

Now Mountain Dew has become a treat — once in a while, when I’m falling asleep at the wheel and there is no good espresso in sight, I will pull over and get a can of dew. In fact I have one in the back seat of my car right now because it came with a lunch special but I really didn’t want it then. I do wonder if I may get back into the dew culture since in the past few months I have begun to launch myself and my bike off of objects all over the city in ways I haven’t done in a long time. Is your level of extremeness directly correlated to the amount of Mountain Dew you drink? Is ‘extreme’ a major ingredient in that cherished carbonated beverage?

• Flat soda at Shalosh Suedos
• I hear that plastic bottles cause cancer
• I love Moscato Diasti in the blue bottle
• Good mountain biking close to the Jewish Catskills
• When did juice become water?

Tagged as: extreme sports, food, humor, mountain dew, my life, soda