My mother has learned not to wake me up before I am good and ready to fall out of my waterbed and onto my floor. It took her twenty years to figure this out: Before this finally hit her, she enjoyed waking me up at three-thirty in the morning so that I could get to work on time. (I hate early-morning shifts, yes I do!)
My mornings would go something like this:
Mom: Don’t you hear your alarm clock?!
Me: Hmmn? Wha?
Mom: Get out of bed! You’ll be late for work!
Me: Call in sick for me.
Mom: You used up all of your sick days!
Me: Then call in dead for me, dammit! It’s cold outside!
Eventually she would yank on my blankets, thus tossing me out of my nice, warm bed and onto the cold floor. I would stumble into the kitchen, lighting a cigarette as I went, and search for Mountain Dew.
Mountain Dew is my caffeine of choice because there’s so much of it in this product! It is loaded with it, along with plenty of sugar and chemicals to preserve, flavor, and color it. All in all, it makes for a great energy booster.
Mountain Dew is largely based on orange juice. It has a sweet citrus taste that really hasn’t been duplicated by any other cola or soft drink companies that I know of. It leaves a heavy aftertaste in your mouth due to the syrup content, but I don’t mind that. It tastes too good to pass up!
Because of all the caffeine and sugar in this product, it is highly addictive - especially to younger members of today’s instant-gratification pop culture. We’re attracted to the packaging - bright and dull green colors in a swirl, with the green and red Mountain Dew logo transposed over it to give the product a trendy aura about it. The commercials are also entertaining as all hell: Young guys on mountain bikes chasing down the wild Cheetah that stole their last can of Mountain Dew, for example. While I personally think it’s absurd to think that only younger people drink this product, I am still amazed at the creative advertising that marketers have conceived in order to sell more of this stuff.
Mountain Dew is also a well-known sponsor for many extreme sporting events. The ESPN X-Games are generally televised with an enormous Mountain Dew banner in the background. The Gravity Games, held annually for skaters, bikers and other rebellious youth also take pride in allowing Mountain Dew to pay them gross sums of money in exchange for video footage of the Mountain Dew logo plastered all over everything in sight.
All in all, Mountain Dew is a very large, very real part of youth culture here in America: You don’t find many people under the age of twenty-five who don’t drink it on a regular basis. But, you’ll also find grown men and women partaking of this sweet, caffeine-laden beverage: It’s not just for kids and teenagers.
I personally buy twelve-ounce cans in twenty-four packs at my local department store. I pay about five bucks per pack - one is enough to last most of the week. So, it tends to cost me a little bit each week/month/whatever, but to me it’s worth it. It’s more expensive than coffee, but the caffeine rush from Mountain Dew is second to none in my book.