The day my life was almost ruined

Before we get started there are two things you should know about me:

1. I love Diet Coke. A lot.
2. When it comes to food, texture is as important as taste. The first (and only) time I had tiramisu I thought the lady fingers would be crispy. Turns out they were soggy, and it totally put me off tiramisu forever. Apples should be crispy, Twinkies should be cake-y, and liquids should not be chunky.

I think you see where I'm going with this.

I've heard horror stories of people ordering fountain drinks, getting to the bottom, and discovering a big, fat cockroach (true story) or something equally horrific at the bottom. Needless to say, I do not want this to happen to me. Particularly when I've just finished enjoying a delicious, cold, fizzy Diet Coke, my drink of choice, my reason for living. One of the worst things that could ever happen to me, lifestyle-ly speaking, is finding a baby's toe or, God forbid, a hobo's tooth in the bottom of my Diet Coke can. It would literally put me off Diet Coke for life. And oh, how sad would I be!

The day after Christmas I headed back over to my mom's house for about the ten billionth time in three days. I brought my full-throttle caffeinated Diet Coke with me (my parents only stock caffeine-free--hey, whatever floats your Diet Coke boat), and had enjoyed the majority of it, down to about the last half inch in the bottom. I went into the kitchen for something (let's be honest, it was probably a snack), came back to my Diet Coke, and tipped my silver baby bottom up. Everything was business as usual until I felt a chunk--A CHUNK--come out of the hole and plop onto my tongue. Understandably shocked and disgusted, I somehow managed to spit the contents of my mouth back into the hole (side note: I hated the larger holes they started putting on soda cans a couple of years ago, but you'd better believe I was grateful for it this day) and ran in a blathering to the garbage can (You know the sound the crazy cat lady makes on The Simpsons? That.). I threw the can in and screamed, "IDON'TKNOWWHATITWASBUTTHEREWAS SOMETHINGINMYSODA!" To which everybody (my mom, sister, and teenage nieces), properly horrified, screamed back, "WHAT WAS IT?!"

Now, maybe you're the kind of person who wants to know what non-soda items fall out of your soda can and into your mouth, but I am not. In this case, ignorance is as blissful as you can get. My mom tried to get my niece to be all stealthy about pulling the can out of the garbage and finding out what the offending item was, but I intercepted, decreeing, "NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO LOOK IN THIS CAN. EVER!"

Then I sat back down on the couch and contemplated the rest of my life. This had huge ramifications on my lifestyle. After this incidence I obviously couldn't drink Diet Coke anymore, at least out of the can. What was I going to do with the fifteen cases of Diet Coke still lining my basement wall? How would I wake up in the morning? What would I have to wash down my breakfast? What would pick me up in the afternoons? What would make my eyes go all big and dreamy, with Diet Coke out of the picture? Is it still acceptable to drink Diet Coke out of a bottle? What if I just pour the contents of the can out into a clear class? Through a strainer? There must be some way out of this disturbing, disgusting mess...

My friends, I fretted over this the rest of that night and all the next day. I still hadn't worked out the finer points when I went out to dinner with my family the next night, so I ordered a water to be on the safe side.

"Why are you ordering a water?" my brother asked.

"Because there was something in her Diet Coke can last night and she's all freaked out," Mom answered for me.

My brother started to laugh, his shoulders shaking.

"I put a piece of cracker in your can last night," he managed to get out. "I totally forgot about it until just now."

If I had caught him in the act of actually putting the cracker in my Diet Coke, I would have given my brother a swift punch in the junk. But now I was so relieved that it wasn't a bug or piece of human appendage that I couldn't be angry.

"You swear it was you?" (I demanded this multiple times over the course of the evening.)

"Yes, I swear it was me," he replied.

I grabbed my mom's Diet Coke and took a huge, long gulp through the straw. After a tenuous twenty-four hour separation, my true love and I were back together at last. And it felt so good.