The Pepsi vs. Coke Debate

My husband and I moved to Ft. Hood, Texas, 37 years ago. He was a young lieutenant fresh out of the basic course. I was 20-year-old bride six months into my first year of marriage. 

My first year as an Army wife should have been easy. It wasn’t. I was an Army brat who knew nothing about the Army. My dad had been gone for large segments of my childhood. By the time I was in tenth grade, he had served two overseas tours in Vietnam and one unaccompanied tour in Iran. When he was home, he was distant and struggled with PTSD and alcoholism. It took most of my childhood and two inpatient rehab stints for him to find his way to sobriety through Alcoholics Anonymous. 

My mother went to college at the early age of 15. She married at 17, had my brother at 19 and me at 20. An Army brat herself, she never fully embraced military life. She was too busy raising my brother and me and worrying about my dad’s drinking. She feared his drinking would cost him his job. She went back to school when I was in fourth grade, won an internship with a local news station by the time I was in fifth grade and by sixth grade her career had skyrocketed. She became the first female anchor on a network news station in Orlando. My parents separated during my dad’s second stint in rehab. They eventually divorced when I was in tenth grade. 

The Army was my dad’s employer; it was never a central player in my life. This left me unprepared for Army life. Within weeks of arriving in Texas, my husband deployed to a field exercise for thirty days. One exercise became multiple exercises. He was gone as often as he was home. There were no mobile phones, personal computers or internet to enable communications. Long distance phone calls to friends and families were unaffordable. Military life would have been extremely lonely had it not been for the friends I developed through the battalion wives’ support group, a group of ladies of all ages, races, demographic backgrounds, political and religious beliefs.

My husband’s company commander’s wife took me under her wing and into her heart. To this day she is the sister I never had. We are different in many ways, but the same where it counts. She would do anything for me; I would do anything for her. She leans right of center; I lean left of center. Over the years, we have disagreed on politics as often as we have agreed on them. We have voted the same in elections; we have voted differently in elections. We both voted for the same candidate in the last presidential election. It would not have mattered if we did not. A single vote could not erase 37 years of knowing her heart. 

Early in our friendship, we were ordering drinks in a diner. I asked the waitress for a Coke. She told me they only carried Pepsi products. My response was to ask for something else. My friend ordered a Pepsi. She went on to tell me she preferred Pepsi to Coke because Coke was too sweet. I responded with surprise and said, “No way! Pepsi is sweeter! AND it is too flat.” She argued back saying, “Definitely not. Coke is flatter!” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. That conversation still defines our friendship.  

Over the years, some things have changed; some things have stayed the same. She prefers Coke now. I traded in soda for tea. We are still two people who see the world quite differently at times, but 37 years later we still choose to share our drinks together. Our differences have born a beautiful friendship.