I will someday soon ask my parents to recount a few of those Moments from my Journey into Adulthood. I know one for sure, though, because in that Moment I hokey-pokeyed outside of my all-about-me bubble just long enough to hear the satisfaction in my mom’s voice.
It was the fall of 1986 and I was in my first few weeks of college. I didn’t have a job yet so I was relying entirely on the Bank of Mom and Dad to finance my education, food, and fun. In high school, I had had jobs and a checking account and a few monthly bills, so the three of us (I think) were confident I could handle living within my monthly budget. At least I was confident, because I was 18 and knew everything. Well, everything except how to clean a toilet but that’s another tale.
I had run out of the food my parents had kindly stocked me up with before they drove the big rental van away from my dorm. The time had come for me to do my very first solo trip to the grocery store.
Of course I had been to the store by myself many times. But never had I been to buy food only for me, food that I needed to turn into meals somehow (my dorm was actually an on-campus apartment with a kitchen. Being the Master Chef that I am, I ate a lot of spaghetti and Kool-Aid.).
I went to the store armed with a list of essentials, stuff I always had a home and figured were critical for survival. You know, like paper towels and fancy-pants bottled water.
Without bothering to look at prices, I loaded up my shopping cart and felt all adulty as I prepared to write a check at the cash register. Imagine my throat-lumped shock when the total for my first week of shopping added up to nearly my entire food budget for the whole month! I had no idea what I had done wrong, and I wasn’t about to put anything back on the shelves, so I shakily wrote the check and escaped Safeway before anyone saw the tears.
Comparing notes with new friends and a later return to the store with eyes on the little price thingys, I came to some startling conclusions. For instance, no college student has any business buying paper towels when a washable rag will do just fine. Huh. Go figure!
Another discovery was so revolutionary, I just had to call home to share it.
“MOM! I went grocery shopping the other day and OH MY GOD…New York Seltzers are SO EXPENSIVE!”
“Yes. I know.”
I can still hear her knowing, self-satisfied tone with just a touch of HALLELUJAH in the background. It was the Moment when I finally had an inkling of how much some of my little indulgences cost, and that they were actually indulgences and not necessities.
My dad and I loved soft drinks and when cute little bottles of flavored seltzer water appeared in the mid-1980s, I just had to try them. I ended up loving them and always put them in the grocery cart, never paying any attention to the price but often wondering why they came in 4-packs instead of 6-packs like everything else. I am sure my mom knew that even in the smaller quantity, the fancy water from NYC was still more expensive than teaching the world to sing.
Well, finally, I knew it too so that was the last time I bought New York Seltzers in the adorable little glass bottles with spongey Styrofoam labels featuring ‘80s-style art deco graphics. I never bought the drinks again because my budget wouldn’t allow it. And then, at some point, they drifted away, much like “Square Pegs,” never to be seen again.
Until now.
I guess because all good trends repeat themselves every 30 years, Wayfarer Ray-Ban sunglasses and New York Seltzer are back!!
Thanks to a friend who works at a local beverage distributor (hi, Pam!), I got early intel that my beloved drink of the ‘80s was making a triumphant return. It’s a slow roll-out across the country and for some reason that I am not questioning, the Portland Metro is among the first areas to get the flavored bubbly goodness. Go us!
Last week I hurried to one of the Authorized Dealers and prepared to load up my fridge with all my favorite flavors. Raspberry! Vanilla Cream! Black Cherry! Fine, I’ll even try the Peach!
I got a big cart and even brought Rob along to help lift the cases I planned to buy. But then…this:
Seriously?!? 98 cents per bottle? Per 10 OUNCE bottle? Do you know how expensive that is??
And wait, look at the nutrition label (did they even have those in the ‘80s? Cuz I sure wasn’t looking.). It’s got cane sugar in it, which I prefer over the chemically stuff, but 130 calories for my Vanilla Cream? 130 calories?!? For 10 ounces?!? Do you know how fattening that is??
For some reason – perhaps because I drink a lot of zero-calorie water of the plain and slightly flavored variety – I was expecting my New York Seltzer to be pretty low calorie. Like zero. I don’t remember it being particularly sweet…but I was a teenager and Screaming Yellow Zonkers and Ding Dongs didn’t strike me as particularly sweet either.
So even though I now gratefully have a sufficient monthly food budget to allow for a nice stash of New York Seltzer, I chose to limit myself to just 2 bottles of each flavor. Mostly out of nostalgia and because I could.
Even so, I cringed at the check-out stand because $11.76 for a 12-pack of soda – even the fabulously not-terribly-sweet (news flash from a 47-year old: oh, yes it is!) bubbled beverage of my youth – is craaaaazy.
And so New York Seltzers shall remain a sweet indulgence, the lessons from That Moment in 1986 still learned and embraced.
And my parents (and more my husband) all say “HALLELUJAH!”
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