do the dew.

i have a best friend. his name is mountain dew. this is true.

dew and i have a long history together.

and TODAY you get to see how my best friend has played a role in every year of my life.

in timeline form.

HERE WE GO!

age 4: first sip. my life was forever changed. nanc wasn't too keen on 'underage drinking', so i had to keep my dew consumpution on the DL.

age 7: [laura will appreciate this..] that summer, my dad used to get home from work around 7pm and force laura and i to work in his garden at the heat peak of the day, with a bajillion mosquitoes. once the 'harvest' came, he would wake us up at the crack of dawn every saturday morning to go sell our veggies at the farmer's market. how did he get us there? for breakfast we got to have a 20oz (this amount was UNHEARD OF for us back then..) bottle of any pop we wanted and a donut from Pete and Joy's bakery. i couldn't wait for saturdays.

age 8: surge came out. i abandoned dew for the allure of a more caffeinated substance.

age 9: dew stuck by me no matter what and was waiting for me as soon as they pulled surge off of the shelves.

age 10: dew consumption increases. i remember one time out in montana my aunt bought a 24-pack for us kids one weekend and i drank 4 cans during a movie. to date, this was the most i had consumed in one sitting.

age 11: dew consumption increases

age 12: march: rachel feels sick. all the time. she can't eat anything without wanting to throw it up. she lays awake at night with pains in her stomach. rachel goes to the doctor. doctor asks: how much pop do you drink? rachel lies. doctor knows. doctor says no mountain dew for 6 months. rachel dies.

age 13: i lost 15 pounds due to no dew consumption. once the 6 months was up, i started up again. [nanc didn't know..]

age 14: dew consumption plateaus.

age 15: enter high school. hello 'sugar shack'. daily dew consumption.

age 16: quit for 7 months between katie's engagement and wedding. lost 10 pounds.

age 17: two words: dew run. me and a couple friends formed an 'addicted' club - complete with t-shirts and an oath. our pre-calc teacher even joined! that year bill clinton decided to suck and get all non-diet pop removed from schools. we retaliated. april of that year, lukas and i were caught by the school cop for sneaking out of the high school to get dew from the hockey rink. first law violation caused by dew: detention.

age 18: ohh the best year of my life. continue 5th period dew runs. may 17th, 2007 - the day the shiz hit the fan: the infamous dew-athlon. long story short, jason brill and i insighted a riot in the cafeteria and spent our last three high school lunches in detention. talk about validation on my LIFE.



age 19: quit for a summer at lake beauty. figured out i didn't have cancer. i've been drinking the jesus juice ever since.

that's about it. i'm drinking a dew right now. and i don't foresee myself ever quitting for good.