In which I win an iPad

You’d think that waking up to the smell of a gaseous 10 year boy trying to compete with the farts of his even more toxic 13 year old brother would make for one crummy morning.  And it did. The sky, a morose grey, didn’t hint at how early it seemed or how late I actually was.  Consequently I couldn’t count on it or my phone alarm clock (which had worked for 2 years up until that morning) to get me to work on time.  Lucky for me the bean burritos my mother had prepared for dinner the previous night resulted in a lot of loud flatulence reverberating through the network of heater vents that generally were used to keep the house warm during the winter.  Who knew Mexican food could be so reliable?

After such a rude awakening I thought my morning could only go up. And it did! That is if you call taking a cold shower (great for clearing away any sleepies), realizing that you have almost no clean clothes (awesome for inventing creative outfit combos) and finding out that you’d have to eat your oatmeal sugarless (who needed those cals anyways?) going up.

At some point in time I remembered somehow getting to work. I believe I drove, but with all the trauma of a bad morning I could’ve easily been poofed there by the traffic fairies and not have noticed a thing. The rest of the day was like that, wandering around in one of those “bad-morning” induced comas and a bad case of the fidgets. I mulled through work and school, barely alive and certain I was suffering from gas poisoning. Until amid the past preterit and imperfect conjugations of “hablar” something struck me so hard that I nearly cried out in recognition. I WAS HUNGRY. Like a silent beast it clawed at my empty stomach, complaining about the pitiful breakfast I had given it and demanding another sacrifice (hunger is a mean aggressive thing).  Yes, an ugly case of the munchies if ever I had known one. Before mi profesor could even say “adios clase” I was gone.

The need was clear, my journey lie ahead.  Vending machines. And not just any would do. No, no, I needed THE vending machines. The only vending machines on campus that I had found to be completely reliable: the vending machines in the Harrison Fine Arts Center.  Surrounded by all that good music and cultural experiences the food there tasted sweeter than ambrosia from the gods. Paying no heed to the unfortunate freshman who got in my way (he took a nasty spill) or the graduate student with an armful of books (well… they were full of books) my feet soon carried me to the desired place.

How unprepared I truly was to the onslaught of emotions that rolled through my already weary body. So many exquisite choices and so little desire to eat any of them. And then, like an epiphany from the vending machine muses, it came to me: I wasn’t actually hungry. How unfortunate. Not wanting the whole quest to go to waste I opted for a pack of Mentos.  That is to say I nearly opted for a pack of Mentos.  The price, however, stopped me. $1.25. $1.25! For twenty, nay fifteen, brightly colored pieces of sugar. Unbelievable. I had to rethink and recalculate.  The frozen dessert machine was nearby, but who wanted ice cream on such a cold day? I could’ve gone with a pastry option, but goodness knows my hips didn’t really need that many calories. I went with the next feasible option: carbonation.

Ah yes! Soda, soda, soda.  The very same soda I had been craving all week. When all else fails, trust in carbonation, folks!  Decidedly I faced my choices.  All Coke products were out as well as the flavored waters, which left me with two formidable options. In corner 1 was heavyweight champion SPRITE. Having defeated over half of Chrisanne’s recent past “craving champions” with its solid bubbly soft-drink expertise it seemed like it would be a shoo-in. In corner 2 old time favorite and past loyal companion during those long nights of judging high school poetry, ladies and gentlemen it’s ROOTBEER!

Oh my, who could choose?

But choose I did. And over a long and painstakingly thought out process loyalty won out. Rootbeer it was. 

Had I made the right decision? Would I regret choosing it’s slightly more woody taste over the sugary Sprite? I only fretted for a moment before the rootbeer was in my hands. Cool and promising I smiled down at the bottle, only to find something I had not expected. A round yellow circle, barley the size of a nickel smiled back at me. And written in type so small I practically had to hold the mysterious purchase within centimeters of my not so keen eye it read:

Congratulations!

You’ve just won a free iPad 16g

Please contact the Cougareat offices to claim your prize.

And that, kids, is how I came by my new iPad. Good things come to those who eat bean burritos.

true story.