Postcards: Somewhere in the Eighties

Made it to Rome. Not doing anything today. Probably just going to feel very hot.

Dear Fellow Expat:

I had a Little League Baseball coach who worked for Gatorade when I was eight.

We were the “Yankees.”

He gave us baseball bags with the Yankees logo on one side and the Gatorade logo on the other. We had a HUGE Gatorade cooler on our bench, and he would fill it during every game… with the same flavor: Lemon Lime.

I’m unsure what happened to the original Lemon Lime flavor, but it changed in the 1990s.

It got sweeter and thicker… honestly, it's pretty bad.

I’ve been chasing that 1980s Lemon Lime flavor for the better part of Adulthood, but I just didn’t realize it.

And here we are in Rome… and on the shelf of a store, I bought the Italian version of Gatorade in a slim bottle.

Lemon Lime - I’ll try it, I thought.

And it’s the same formula as the Little League.

Somewhere, they changed the formula in America.

Different sucrose… A Benzine… a new phosphate…

They tested it on a monkey and a beagle. They lived.

Whatever.

And as I travel across Europe - shedding pounds because …