It's almost three in the afternoon here. I tend to nurse my coffee throughout the day, making a couple of big strong cups and spending an hour or two on them. I'm not the least bit afraid of my coffee not being hot. At some point between then and the later drinking hour I try to get some water into my system though I readily admit to not drinking nearly enough. There's another cuppa in my future, though I tend to take a coffee break between cups two and three, otherwise I know I'll have a cup four. I try to keep it to three.
Feeling thirsty and knowing I was between cups of coffee, I pondered water but realized I wanted a coke. Where I'm from there are two different meanings of the word coke. If you want Coke, that's the stuff in the red can, Coca-Cola. If you want coke with a small "c" then you have a much broader variety from which to choose.
I did contemplate a beer, and I have a variety currently from which to choose. I'm not against afternoon beer or even morning beer. I have a friend that works late enough that he and his coworkers have an a.m. happy hour. I'm just not feeling beerish at the moment. Plus, this isn't the point, though it is nice to know I'm still slightly in control of my raging drunkenness.
I have recently found myself using the word soda on occasion though I fear what that may be saying about me losing some of my southernness, as if that's possible growing up in Atlanta before living in both Carolinas and now Tennessee. Big fat chance of me growing too urbane, and I'm a little okay with that. Before we get into my own version of the neo southern gentleman, the kind like me that can drink moonshine straight from the jar as well as admit that Freddie Mercury was really the only truly hot man in a mustache, we'll remind ourselves that today's lame ass post fodder is semantic in nature.
Coke with a small "c" can not of course be meant to include all carbonated soft drinks. While my favorite coke may be cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper, I would actually prefer, if given the option, a lime flavored Jarritos. I don't know if Jarritos falls under the coke moniker in my opinion, and I think that's mostly because Jarritos flavors are all fruit based while cokes are generally accepted to be mostly contrived of . . . limon? cola? What the fuck are those things? Neither Sprite nor 7 Up taste at all like lemon or lime or even denatured citrus additive number 1217. Okay, maybe they do taste like DCA1217, but that's still not the point. And what the hell is the glorious substance that flavors Dr. Pepper? Because even without the cherry or vanilla it's a tasty beverage.
In the end, maybe they are all coke. I might have to ask around.
And for anyone from Wisconsin and maybe even Michigan, what the hell is pop? Seriously, pop?! Pop is what you get in the mouth when you get to sassin'. Pop is the sound of a balloon bursting. Who calls their soda drinks by an onomatopoeia that has no relation to the product in question? That's just weird.
4 comments:
Have you ever listened to your soda, your coke? There are a million little bubbles that pop as soon as you pull the tab on the can and especially after you pour.
I'm uncertain as to why it's called pop, but that's what I grew up hearing/saying in Chicago and not until many miles and years away did I look back and listen to someone else say it. It is strange in the way that dialects are strange.
I wouldn't go ordering a 'rum and pop' in Chicago, though, or you just may get what you expect outta that word in the South.
They may be bubbles popping, but the sound you are hearing is actually a fizz.
When I moved here, it was the first time I heard the word "cocola". A nurse was wrongly advising my sister to drink it when she has an insulin reaction. You see my sister has "the sugar" which was what the same nurse used as a southern colloquialism for diabetes. I was not in Kansas anymore. That was our big joke in the day.
Live in Minnesota, lived in South Dakota, Colorado and Wyoming...
all places people call it pop.
Pop is short for sodapop.
I could never call it "coke" because I would be mortified if someone heard me say I need a coke, thinking it might be the white powdery type which I have never tried in my life.
Pop.
Now my son? He hates the term pop and refuses to use it. He corrects me all the time. He calls it soda. And to that I think -- what, are you going to drink some baking soda?
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