Coke Folks

Several summers, and several cities, ago, I was sitting at a rowdy farewell lunch with some colleagues, who were toasting everything from the least expected work hook ups to the completion of the most mundane projects. Beer, tears, conversation were flowing. As somebody reached to pour some coke into my empty glass, another hand reached over to stop him. "No, Sisi is Mormon. No coke for her."

I didn't bother explaining the complicated situation of how coke was actually not officially outlawed, but instead it straddled a hazy line in the church between being explicitly forbidden and unambiguously accepted.

And I admit. I was looking forward to the icy cold coke alternative instead of the usual boiling hot water they served you in China. But rather than confuse them on the Mormon image, I just smiled, wiped the sweat off my forehead, and asked for the water instead.

I grew up in a household where drinking coke was a minor sin. It was somewhere up there with doing homework on Sundays, wearing skirts that were too high above your knees, and dating non-church boys in high school. Ginger Ale was on the black list too, since my mom concluded that it must contain alcohol somehow.

So as a teenager, I satisfied myself with coke-flavored gummies and flirtatious looks in the school hall ways.

It was a college boyfriend who first introduced me to the sensational experience of combining barbecue chicken pizza and a coke. While I limited my coke intake to the occasional California Pizza Kitchen, it felt deliciously rebellious, and yet satisfyingly safe in this good Mormon girl's fight against the imagined system kind of way.

At the recent family reunion, when my mom casually asked me what I was drinking, J cheerfully replied "Cherry Cola Slurpee." I squeezed his hand so hard. He thought I was being romantic. Jody's eyes and mouth widened, "Sisi, you drink coke now?!"

Silence. I slurped some more.

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So today, when I saw that most of the Mormons on facebook were buzzing with the news that the Church had finally made a statement saying that it "[did] not prohibit the use of caffeine," I felt an irrational sense of disappointment. Bummed that the statement did not also pardon my favorite Tiramisu dessert as well (one I'd long given up long ago out of overwhelming guilt). And also a little miffed that my status as the only kid in the Messick household who dared to secretly sip coke once every quarter in a quiet personal rebellion had now been rendered . . . boringly mainstream.