I Write About Fanta and It's Pretty Dramatic

Their Fanta is yellow. Yellow! Can you even imagine? I sure can't. There's not a soul about us who can. It's positively unnatural, I say. I mean, here we are–civilized individuals, mind you–waiting ever so patiently on our meal, and this waiter, this apron-donning charlatan, has the audacity, the bravado to deliver us this-this what? This falsity of American consumerism. Oh, the humanity!

Of course, it's not my Fanta. I ordered wine. We're in Naples, by God! Who orders soda in Italy? Nobody. Nobody that isn't still sporting Spongebob underwear, that is, and my nephew is perennially culpable on that offence. Here's how it all went down:

Max, our Italian waiter whose mother must have missed that memo when she was doing the naming, rolls on out of Neverland, or whatever lives in a Neapolitan kitchen, and asks us what it is we'd like to drink. My dad tries to order a Pepsi, but Max ain't having it, says they only have Coke products. Real wise guy, he is. Fuckin' Max. Anyway, my dad just gets a water and everybody else gets drunk. Except my nephew. He gets a Fanta, bless his soul.

Eventually, and I mean eventually, Max finds his way. Out he comes with nine wine glasses in tow. Like, what the hell, Max? Can't you even count? I'd heard Italian schools were top notch.There are only eight of us, Max, and you know we all didn't order wine. Now we have a surplus. Great.

So, my sister cracks that baby right open. Chc-fshhhhh, it says, like it belongs here, like its very existence isn't a fraud, like it's not some wolf dressed cozy in a coat of wool. Nobody thinks a thing of it, either. Why should they? By all metrics, this is a entirely ordinary can of Fanta. A little slim, maybe. Taller than some. But this is Europe. They do things wonky here.

No. No one even bats an eye until my nephew–he's a venturous spirit–decides to snatch up one of those excess wine glasses and do some emulating. Bam. The room stops. Is that Fanta yellow? one of my brothers exclaims. My God, it is! So, there we are, massed around the wine glass of a brave little five-year-old, mesmerized, transfixed, taken.

I thought you ordered Fanta. That's what we all thought to say, at first, in our empty attempts at rationale. But we all see it: that can of Fanta, plain in our view. This is the real deal. This is happening.

Thither comes Max, and now he's got our pizza. He doesn't understand. He never does. Max. And so we restore our facade, return to our false reality, but there it lingers. There's something, tacit, that we now all share, that connects this family. The Fanta is yellow. My God.