As just about everyone knows, today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the first day of Lent and the upcoming Easter holiday. People everywhere are giving up luxuries for the next forty days: from meat to Twitter and from gossiping to cigarettes.

I’ve never really participated in Lent, because I’ve always thought of it as more of a Catholic thing, and I’m not Catholic, but a lot of denominations of Christianity do it.

While sitting around at dinner last night, two of my Catholic friends were participating in “Fat Tuesday.” I was kind of doing the same, although it wasn’t for religious reasons; I’ll look for any excuse to eat in excessive amounts.

They started telling us what they were giving up for the next forty days, which lead to my whole friend group saying they would participate in this tradition. Everyone was thinking up what they would be renouncing. One of my friends is doing chocolate, and he considers chocolate milk to be equivalent to water. One is doing sweets in general, and I’ll be honest with you, I don’t have that much self-control. When it got around to me, everyone looked at me and had the same thought: “Mello Yello.”

I have an addiction, okay? I drink it daily. I drink other beverages with caffeine but Mello Yello gets me going. My friends have unsuccessfully been trying to get me off the stuff since I started college. Sometimes they take it from me and trash it. Sometimes they won’t let me sit down and eat unless they’ve seen what’s in my cup. They tried to deprive me of it during finals week, but eventually gave it back for fear of me failing my tests. I was also forced to make a New Year’s resolution to ditch it, which lasted a total of like three days. When it comes to Mello Yello, I think of Kacey Musgrave’s “Blowin’ Smoke” lyrics:

We all say
That we’ll quit someday
When our nerves ain’t shot
And our hands don’t shake.

“Fine. I will go forty days without Mello Yello.” They all smiled. I don’t think they believe that I can do it. Heck, I don’t know if I can do it! One of them said, “Maybe you’ll go without it so long that you won’t want to drink it after Lent!”

Yeah right. All I know is: I will probably be drinking Mello Yello with my Easter dinner this year.