Have you noticed that people who have a favorite root beer will fight and die defending its honor? I’m talking up-in-arms, straight buckwylin’, will fuck you UP if you disparage their root beer.
I intend no obloquy towards root beer lovers, so tenderly do I embrace the newness of living. But it kind of reminds me of a another group I feel no warmth towards: the people at restaurants who are all “I’ll have a Coke!” and then the waiter says “Is Pepsi okay?” and the people are all “Eww gross no way I’ll just have water.”
I don’t get their angle. I mean I understand having preferences, (as you know I’m quite happy to spend hours on end debating the relative merits of Dr Pepper vs Mr Pibb) but come on. Life is way too short. Why get all huffy about wanting Coke when there’s only Pepsi, or wanting Pepsi when there’s only Coke? How about cultivate an interest in a different flavor? There’s lots! And how about not taking your corporate allegiances so seriously?
It’s like a strange kind of proletarian elitism, where people feel embarrassed about the fact that they can’t tell a Merlot from a Shiraz, and have to take it out on the kid working the counter at Burritoville.
Besides which, it’s all academic: anyone with any culture knows that Royal Crown is the best cola. I mean duh.
I think it has something to do with high school. I don’t know about other peoples’ experiences, but in my high school, you picked Coke or Pepsi and it was as serious as picking which gang you wanted to fight with. If you were caught “switching sides,” even if there was no other option, you would be sent to beverage hell. No one would claim you and you would feel cut off from all that was good. Now that I’m older, I realize this is actually freedom, but maybe not everyone is as liberated.