When I was in junior high, if we earned a little money from mowing grass or picking up pecans or whatever, it wouldn’t be long before we’d be at Kerb Felkins’ grocery store in Fitzhugh.
Kerb had an oldtimey pop box with two hinged lids. You’d open one of the lids and there would be dozens of bottles of pop cooling themselves in two inches of icy water.
You’d fish out the brand you wanted, pry off the lid in the opener on the side of the pop box and then sit on a milk crate and listen to the old guys tell stories while you drank your pop.
He had the usual brands - Coke, Pepsi, RC, Dr Pepper - plus a few that have faded from memory: Double Cola. Chocolate Soldier, Nesbitt’s Orange. Mason’s Root Beer and the original Grapette.
And then one glorious day, a new bottle showed up. It was green and filled with a wonderful yellow nectar with a hint of citrus. Delicious.
We soon noticed that you could slam a couple of them and develop the energy to mow a bunch more yards that afternoon.
It was Mountain Dew.
It was marketed with a hillbilly theme. “It’ll tickle yore innards” and “Get the barefoot feeling” were a couple of the early catch phrases.
No matter. It was good stuff. Along the way, I switched to Diet Mountain Dew, which I liked better because it had more carbonation and a little more whang than the regular version.
Fast forward five decades to about a month ago, when I was answering a few questions during a meeting with a nutritionist.
She had suggested, among other things, that I drink 25 gallons of water a day. Ok, ok. Maybe it was only 64 ounces, but that seemed as unreasonable as 25 gallons.
Then she found out that I was drinking four, maybe five, maybe six Diet Dews a day.
After a while, the conversation turned to the drowsiness and downright sleepiness that seems to crash upon me in the early afternoon.
Then she looked over her mask and said, apparently seriously, that I should give up the Diet Dew for water.
“Sure. When pigs can fly and shuffle cards,” I thought to myself.
But afterwards, I began to think: “She’s getting paid a chunk of money to give this advice, and what do I have to lose?”
So, I decided to give it a shot. By the time you read this, it will have been about four weeks since I had my last Diet Dew.
A full 24-pack and a part of another are on the table just over an arm’s reach from my desk at work and there are some cold ones in the refrigerator.
I’ll move them eventually, but for now they make good will-power checks.
So, we come to the bottom line: Has it worked? Do I feel better, have more energy and less mid-day sleepiness?
I pause here and take a deep breath for dramatic effect. The answer is a clear-cut “Maybe.” I’ve been swilling water at an unheard-of rate and usually beat the 64-ounce challenge, so I am definitely better hydrated.
And my kidneys may be grateful for sending fewer filterables their way.
I still get sleepy a lot and have resorted to a short nap whenever the lids get too heavy.
Surprisingly, I haven’t had any withdrawal issues. Sometimes I reach for the refrigerator door without thinking, kind of like a reformed smoker reaching for the pocket where he used to keep his cigarettes.
But, over all it hasn’t been too bad.
And I have discovered that tap water is a whole lot cheaper than a case of Diet Dew.
So we’ll see. I might just make this a permanent lifestyle choice.