One of the things I’ve been trying to get back under control is my soda habit. I’m a compulsive soda drinker. If I have any volume of it at my disposal, I will drink it instead of water. My usual way of controlling things has been to just not keep it in the house, and when I’m having a craving, go to the store and pick up no more than two cans. It works pretty well for me.

I got out of this habit when I moved into my apartment in September because of money concerns. The problem with the two can a day plan is it’s just not as economical as going to the grocery store and buying the 3 liter generic soda. Cans of soda here are a $1 a can. So, I have a $2 a day soda habit. But a 3 liter bottle, costs $1.25 and would last me two days.

Let’s break down the math.

Let’s say our period of time is 2 days, the amount of time it takes me to go through a 3 liter bottle.

Using my 2 can a day limit… I’m consuming 4 cans over the course of 2 days. Cans are 12 fl oz each, meaning I’m consuming 48 fl oz of soda which equals approximately 1.4 liters of soda consumed in 2 days. Approximately half of what I’d be consuming if I bought the $1.25 generic instead.

I am paying over 3 times more to drink half the amount of soda.

Really, the most economical thing to do is quit. And well… You really don’t want to see how bitchy I get when I haven’t had that dose of sugar in the afternoon.

But anyway… that’s not what I wanted to write about.

My little 2 can a day habit tends to have me craving a soda about 2:30pm, so it’s usually somewhere around that time that I put my shoes on and walk over a block to the bodega, a tiny little place with a very small selection of Mexican groceries (which means all the canned goods are Goya, they don’t have any large bags of American potato chips and you can buy Jesus candles here).

The bodega also happens to be across the street from the neighborhood elementary school, which gets out approximately at the same time that I want to get my soda. Which means that every day when my head is screaming “I need a soda now!” it means I have to deal with a store of 7 to 10-year-olds who are speaking in Spanglish.

Which is always an interesting experience because my Italian inherited complexion apparently screams “Hablo español!” when in fact when spoken to in Spanish, my brain goes completely blank and for about 30 seconds, I can’t even remember how to say anything in English let alone even try to use the very very limited conversational Spanish that I somehow managed to retain in three years of high school Spanish class.

It’s something so small, but when the madre of the two little girls behind me in line who were still arguing loudly, in English, over which bags of chips they should get said to me in Spanish to go ahead in line and I answered without skipping a beat, “Gracias,” I literally floored myself.

I love my neighborhood.