i hate root beer.

who the heck wants to drink beer from a root anyway? not me.

many of you who know me well know that i have never vomited. i have no gag reflex. i often get nauseous, but i never ultimately throw up. never in my known memory. however, the closest i have ever come to doing so, i believe, is when i was in second grade. i remember it clearly..... i was still sharing a bedroom with my brother at this point. we had twin beds that could not be far enough apart, as far as i was concerned. he was a royal pain in my tail...but that's another story. anyway, one day, in second grade, i became violently ill with some kind of 24-hour flu type thing of death. i would not eat anything. it was then that my mother, in her infinte wisdom, thought that she would give me some soda to help my ailing stomach. apparently we were fresh out of ginger ale (which i also detest, by the by), so root beer was the next logical choice. all i remember is taking a few long sips, and before all of it reached my little tortured tummy, it all shot right back up and out, burning my esophagus and forever tainting my traumatized taste buds.

call me pavlov's dog, but to this day, root beer conjures up a sympathetic taste response that is the closest thing to vomit i have ever known. so y'all can just stop trying to sway me with your sentiments in favor of the "all-American beverage." you can have as much of your patriotic carbonated barf water as you like. just keep it away from me.