Warm Coke

Any fool who drinks Coke on a regular basis has surely realised by now that 70% of the quality taste of coke comes solely from the serving temperature.

Any such fool has also come to know the deadly situation which arrises when one inadvertantly becomes preocupied with coding/borowsing/reading/etc for the next 5 or 12 hours.

When you regain conciousness you will take a sip from your glass, just as you did (what seemed like) just a mement ago! But the ice cubes are long gone, the beading condensation running down the glass, is no longer there to begin dripping away as you wrap your fingers around the glass. The endless supply of tiny bubbles rising to the surface has baan exhausted! These are all signs you should have picked up on, but at 6am who can blame you? So you take a sip...

At this point the body's natural defence will usually deploy a rapid gagging motion, and the bile will start to rise to your throat. If you're one of the strong ones, and you spit it out fast enough, you might just get off with a warning...this time.

This my friends, is the phenomenon of Warm Coke!

My younger brother, when in junior high, used to actually warm his Coca-cola by leaving the (sealed) bottle out for a few hours. This way it would be warm but not diluted by ex-ice or flat. Then he'd gleefully glug it down. I once asked him why he did this, as I knew how toxic Coke was warm. His answer: "I like to hear my teeth squeak."

Shudder.

I have had a couple of bad warm coke experiences in my time.

The first was at college. I had been out to a cocktail party and got home about 2am a little worse for wear. After about 3 hours sleep I woke up in need of a pee. As I made my way down to the bathroom I could feel my head pounding from the hangover that was already well on its way. In the bathroom I saw a 1/2 full can of coke, which, in my dehydrated state was more than a welcome sight. Unfortunatley as I took a swig from the can it became all too apparent that it was in fact a can of urine, lovingly left in the bathroom by one of my housemates.

I then threw up.

The second was when I went to visit a friend of mine who was working in his dad's shop over summer a couple of years ago. I had been chatting with him for about an hour when I noticed that he had an open can of coke by the till. I asked if I could have some (I perversely enjoy warm, flat coke) and he said 'sure'. I really should have seen the small half-smile that accompanied his affirmative response which may have alerted me to the fact that there was something not quite right with the neglected beverage. I soon found out after a hefty slurp that he had been flicking the ash from his 30 a day Marlboro habit into the cake for the past 4 hours. Then I nearly threw up.