Pop
noun: pahp
There’s something almost childish about this term. Like calling a dog a woof or a bomb a boom, pop is pure, carbonated onomatopoeia. Every time I hear it, I imagine it in all-caps, comic-book font, and tailed by an exclamation mark: “POP!” It feels so silly and cartoonish that it’s almost un-Minnesotan. Soda seems a more natural fit, a half rhyme for the state’s name with two vowels that can be lengthened and rounded by a Norwegian accent. But no. It’s calorie-laden, sugar-soaked, served-in-oversized-cups pop. It is the definition of excess, so maybe it deserves a showy descriptor. And drinking it is such a sensory experience. You crack a can. Its sweetness fizzes. The bubbles make you belch. Now that I think about it, how could it be anything but pop?
