The Biggest Scam Since Bottled Water

Way back in the pre-Genius days, around 1993, I was driving an hour each way to work in the city. I had my favorite car of all time, a cherry-red 1990 Toyota Corolla. As needed, I filled it up with gas at the 7-Eleven out by the park. Sometimes I'd buy a bottle of water to take in my lunch. Same lunch every day. Cheddar cheese on a plain bagel with yellow mustard, and pretzel sticks in a baggie.

One day the clerk, a middle-aged woman, laughed as she rang up my purchase. "I never thought I'd see the day when people paid for WATER!"

How times have changed. The 7-Eleven went out of business. Bottled water is big business.

Let the record show that for months now, I've been adding lime juice to my 44 oz Diet Coke. It all started when Farmer H wanted to make that drink he had at a steakhouse on a visit with The Pony. It was a Montana Mule, and one of the ingredients not whiskey or ginger beer was lime juice. I bought limes, and some were left over. I found the addition to my magical elixir to be delicious, so I started buying limes every week.

Cutting limes to put in a daily 44 oz Diet Coke grows tedious. I have to roll them to loosen the juices. Then cut them into fourths. Squeeze over a strainer. Scrape the pulp out of the strainer so it doesn't clog the sink drain. Rinse the strainer. Dispose of the lime skins. Wash my hands.

Last week, I saw the plastic bottles of lime juice next to the limes at The Devil's Playground. I figured that would be SO MUCH easier! Just pop the top, and squeeze in my lime juice. No fuss, no muss. I bought three of the plastic bottles instead of a bag of 10 limes.

I didn't pay much attention to the instructions. Only the part about poking a tiny hole in the top once you pop the lid open. It makes no nevermind to me that one squeeze is the juice of half a medium lime. I usually put two small limes worth of juice into my 44 oz Diet Coke. And who's to say how much is in a squeeze. I thought just looking at how much was going in would allow me to include the regular amount. It probably did. However...

This stuff is terrible!

Even though the bottle says the lime juice is from concentrate, I find it hard to believe that this juice was ever inside a living lime. No matter how much I squeeze in, I don't get the lime flavor. All I get is an acidic burning in my stomach by the end of the evening. I'd be hard-pressed to identify lime as a flavor if given a blind taste test. It's like adding acid-water to my beverage.

It's so terrible that I'm thinking of telling Farmer H, "You can have this lime juice if you want it."

I might not notice the issue if I was mixing it in a Montana Mule.