Hello friends. I don’t know what the below is. I think I drank too much Pepsi.

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Poor Pepsi.

While Diet Coke and Coke Zero slow dance at the prom, Pepsi sits in the corner, worried that there may be spinach stuck in its braces, oblivious to the ‘kick me’ sign that someone has placed on its back.

The Cokes are the T-Birds from Grease. Pepsi is… Screech from Saved by the Bell.

I happen to love Pepsi. Pepsi Max, specifically. Nearly every time I have written a newsletter, I have been drinking Pepsi Max. If left to my own devices I would chain drink the stuff. In fact, if some sort of Pepsi Max drip was available, I would hook myself up without question. At this point, my blood type is A Resus Aspartame.

The other carbonated beverages just won’t do. Regular Coke is out. If I have one, there’s a high chance I’ll start doing cartwheels in the street and end up in a video sold to TMZ. That fistful of sugar interacts somewhat sub-optimally with my wavy brain.

Coke Zero is… not bad, I guess. Perhaps the thing that stresses me out about Coke Zero is the whole ‘Share a Coke with’ promotion they often do, where I feel under pressure to choose a bottle with the right name. You know what I mean. I don’t want extra choices in my life, Coke Zero, why are you making me choose a name for my bottle of fizzy black juice?

And then there is Diet Coke. The internet has gendered her and if I’m honest she does suit she/her pronouns. How does a can of pop suit a specific set of pronouns? I don’t make the rules. I blindly follow the internet, sweating to keep up with what is hip and happening yet inevitably the older I get the more I come across like the mother of Regina George in Mean Girls.

‘I’m not a regular mom, I’m a cool mom,’ I scream, as I try my best to not get ‘Benson Boone’ mixed up with ‘Benny Blanco’.

We can all agree that Diet Coke really is that bitch. She is also, I’m sorry to say, rank. Really sorry to break it to you Diet Coke girlies, but that stuff is gross.

I’m a self-reflective person. I am fully aware that there’s something a bit weird about my Diet Coke hate, other than the fact that I am using she/her pronouns to refer to a chilled beverage, and the fact that I am writing this essay at all.

Diet Coke gives me the same vibes that my school bullies did. There I said it. Is that an unhinged thing to say? Did I just type that?

I don’t know what it is that makes me feel this way. Oh my god, is it my latent ‘I’m Not Like Other Girls’ tendencies from my teenage years rising to the surface and finding a home in fizzy pop discourse?

Perhaps it is the whole ‘assigning drinks to gender binaries’ thing. Can someone tell me what the non-binary drink is? Please do not say Irn Bru.

I don’t know why I like Pepsi Max so much. One thing’s for sure, it isn’t the taste. I don’t even have words to describe it, it’s such an absence of flavour. If anything, it tastes of aggressively fizzy syrup. I don’t believe there is any other sparkling drink that hurts when drunk quickly.

So it isn’t the product itself. Maybe it’s the marketing.

Oh no.

Am I a huge fan of Pepsi because I see myself in it?

Am I subconsciously sympathising with a multinational conglomerate?

Am I buying a product because I feel sorry for it?!

There it is.

I root for the underdog, as I also feel like the underdog.

Pepsi, in the zillion dollar global competition for best sparkly brown water, is also the underdog.

Like attracts like.

I need to speak to my therapist about this.

I know this has absolutely nothing to do with neurodiversity but if I’m honest, my deep thoughts about drink brands does betray some sort of… non-normative thinking right?

Hope you liked this one. If you did, consider giving it a like or even sharing it with a friend/neighbour/your postman.

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Take it easy, and drink some water,

Ren

PS.

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You enjoy what you enjoy