Polite Dissent

I love Pop Rocks. Whoever invented them deserves a Nobel Prize. I run across them a couple of times a year (usually in the check-out line in a toy store) and buy several packages. They’realways gone before I get home.

When I was about ten or eleven, I was on vacation with my family in the Great Smokey Mountains. At a candy store in Gatlinburg, I bought some Pop Rocks. I had recently heard the rumor that combining Pop Rocks and soda would kill you. Being a not-always-as-bright-as-I-should-be ten year-old, I decided to give the rumor a test. I downed a package of Pop Rocks followed by a can of Coke. Right after guzzling the Coke, it suddenly dawned on my juvenile brain that if the rumor were true, I had made a pretty big mistake. My ten year-old life flashed before my eyes (and didn’t last long). It was all in vain, though — nothing happened. I didn’t explode, throw up or even belch. So much for rumors…