Things I remember

In 1985, Coca-Cola introduced “New Coke”, this move is in retrospect considered one of the great marketing blunders of the 20th century. I imagine that the people who actually sit around look back and categorize “marketing blunders” are pot smoking MBA candidates who don’t really know enough about music or movies but have an over-developed sense of irony. But really that’s an aside to the core point, new coke destroyed families. Here is my story.

It was winter. In the mid 80s my uncles were prone to hanging out at my parent’s home. My mom always cooked and they liked hanging out with me and the then baby bump. Sometimes they would bring friends. This was interesting because I never brought friends home. That always made me uncomfortable. My mom was always one to live by the adage that people should be in their own home, as opposed to each others. But my uncles would occasionally bring friends. As it was the mid 80s everyone who came thru dressed like an extra from one of two films, Crush Groove or Purple Rain. Some dressed a little closely to George Michael (either ignoring the gayness or George or anticipating their own eventual early nineties admission of gayness) One dude, who’s name was Felix, made people call him flex. I think he wore one fishnet glove. No one cared.

Anyway, one of these goons, asked my dad for a coke once and my dad brought him a can. He inspected it and asked if he could have an “old coke”. My dad mentioned that this was a coca-cola classic and goon professed it was not the same. That there was coke, new coke and coca-cola classic and that each was completely different.

First of all, this is a classic bad guest. Who makes these demands on people? Second its’ been 8 months since new coke. Does anyone really think if we are stashing a large supply of original coke, we’d say "this is for the next time a pop locking goon with a bad perm comes over"

Still my dad, a gentleman and a scholar was embarrassed. What a horrible host that he did not have the foresight to store away soon to be stale soda on the off chance some 18 year old chump will come in and ask for some. So no new coke, no coca-cola classic…just toolery…just toolery

This memory flashed before my eyes Saturday at 6am as I stumbled into my apartment wondering about a series of morally ambiguous decisions I had just made.