Drink it up

Soda molds. I didn't realize this right away. I suppose it ought to be intuitively obvious – it is wet and sugary. But, I think I had always kept urban legends in the back of my mind about how Coke's acidity makes it a great car battery/highway/toilet/grease cleaner. I realize that none of these are true, but the idea still must have stuck on some level.

Also, there was the fact that prior to dating Shrek, I had never seen, or heard of, a soda molding. Like 99% of the population, after opening a soda, I reseal it, consume it, or dispose of it within an hour. Aside from not wanting to attract flies, there is the issue of a half-empty can of soda being a spilling hazard. Being clumsy, I make a point to not leave anything around that could potentially be knocked-over and create a mess. Shrek did not share my diligence in soda management.

Shrek drank more soda than anyone I have ever met (a combination of this and poor oral hygiene contributed to his nasty-ass teeth, but that is another story). He went through 3 cases of it a week. And this is not counting the sodas he bought from the machines in the dorms, the food court on campus or at Burger King. Shrek was also not known for his cleanliness. His dorm was always messy and dirty.

One day, he had gotten stuck working at the front desk of the building for a lot longer than expected (the person with the shift after him decided to leave town without bothering to tell anyone). I felt a little bad for him and decided to do his laundry since I knew he had planned to when he was done with work. I gathered up about 8 loads worth of dirty clothes (it had been a while) and took over the entire laundry room.

When I went back to his room to put his detergent away, I noticed that his room was really gross. Not wanting to bring clean clothes into a dirty room, I decided to throw away some of the trash lying around. I put all the paper plates and candy bar wrappers sitting around in a trash bag. I then went to round up the 20-some soda cans sitting throughout his room and realized that many of them still had soda inside.

So, I took as many as I could carry (4 – I have small hands) across the hall to the bathroom so I could empty them out in the sink. I poured out the first one. Out came some flat Cherry Coke…and a small white mass.

I assumed it must have been something other than mold. I mean really, who leaves soda cans sitting out long enough to mold?

I poured out the next can and even more white stuff came out. At this point I realized what was going on. I was totally grossed-out by the idea of dumping moldy soda in the sink. But, I was even more grossed out by the thought of Shrek just ignoring them for the rest of the year. So, I opted to continue with my plan of emptying all the soda cans and disposing of them.
Out of all the cans in his room, there were three that had no visible traces of mold inside. Three. I have no idea how long it takes a soda to mold to the degree that some of these had, but I am guessing it is a few months.

The worst part was, even after having a talk about the moldy soda, he did not get any better about cleaning up. The next time I was over (a few days later), there were 6 new open cans sitting on his desk.