Welcome to NewDietDewIsYucky.com

19 Years with Diet Mountain Dew

In the spring of 1987, I was finishing my junior year in high school. I drove my dad's '79 Ford van everywhere I went, a steady stream of Kiss and Van Halen issuing from its stereo. It would be five months to my first car, six years to my first broken heart, ten years to my first mortgage payment, and fifteen years to the first time someone called me "Daddy." And I was making $3.35 an hour running the drive-through window at Taco Bell three weeknights and all day Saturday.

I would get the question "Do you have Diet Mountain Dew?" a couple of times a week, and that was when I first learned of the stuff. I think it had just been introduced in our market. I'd always liked Mountain Dew okay, but found it too sweet. I didn't really like diet drinks, but would I like a diet version of something I found too sweet? Intrigued, I picked one up at my favorite long-since-bulldozed Spur station somewhere in that timeframe, and thus began the greatest loyalty to a consumer product I've ever had.

I was never without it. My aforementioned first car, a 1977 Celica, had its hazard lights switch on top of the steering column, and it was a perfect place to park a bottle cap while driving. Eventually friends headed into convenience stores to pick up road food stopped asking me what I wanted to drink, and just wordlessly came back with a Diet Dew for me. Debbie, the pleasant and attractive woman who owned my Spur station, gave me a six-pack of 16-oz. bottles for Christmas one year. And so it went. If I was awake, I had a Diet Mountain Dew going.

A year and change later, I started college and part-time employment with a family-owned bookstore, and my loyalty only intensified. I'd usually already finished a glass of Diet Mountain Dew at home and a 16-oz. bottle on the way in before I even got to class, at which time I'd begin my third Diet Mountain Dew of the day (another 16-oz.). Most days I'd had 44 oz. of Diet Dew before I'd been awake for two hours. By the end of my sophomore year, I was just carrying a 2-liter everywhere I went and drinking right out of the bottle. The price of a "single serving" at the convenience store was rapidly closing on what a supermarket 2-liter cost anyway, and besides, they'd started offering "single servings" as large as a liter. Wasn't a big jump to make.

One interesting thing that happened to my taste for Diet Mountain Dew was that the temperature of the drink almost stopped mattering completely. I didn't object to the taste of the stuff even after it had been out of the refrigerator for two or three hours, as the last swallow of a college-day 2-liter often was. I didn't even mind swigging off one that had been left in a closed car in the summertime, though I did learn to shield it from direct sunlight, because if it got too hot then the aspartame started doing weird things and it tasted bad.

It's life, so things came and went. My Spur station was sacrificed for a strip mall. Debbie moved across the street to an Amoco station, then left the business entirely shortly thereafter. I graduated. My Celica became a Taurus, which became an Integra, in which I received my first speeding ticket. I turned from a bookstore employee to a car salesman to a technical writer. I moved from a dive to a nice apartment. I got married. We built a house and had children. Diet Mountain Dew fueled me daily.

And here I am, if not quite to Middle Age Avenue then at least seeing "Approaching Destination" on the navigation system. I couldn't ask for a better go of it so far. All of my family and career expectations have been exceeded. Life is good.

And my omnipresent carbonated companion of 19 years checks out on me. That little pocket of my life has been so good and so automatic for so long that I resent having to think about soft drinks again. I killed a 2-liter Diet Sun-drop writing this piece, and there's no more in the house, but that doesn't matter because I don't want any more Diet Sun-drop for now. More Diet Mountain Dew always tasted good.

Now I'm nursing a Diet Coke, but I don't want any more of that today either, which is unfortunate, because that's what I asked Mrs. Williams to get at the store this morning. (There is still some novelty in her asking me such questions at all; it wasn't necessary until the Diet Dew formula change.) So now we have three 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke that might last a month. Fortunately there's a Sprite Zero in there, so maybe I'll get a glass or two out of that this afternoon before I'm tired of it too.

I am weary of this ongoing stream of subpar mistress sodas, PepsiCo. Give me my wife back at once.

(email address removed)

Home