The Intelligence Estimate

I'm in Iowa right now. No, no, no...I'm not after your pity. However, I won't turn it down either! I say that because I spent yesterday and today with Mom and the conversation got around to this blog. She's on the e-mail list that gets the blog sent to them as soon as it's updated. Not that it does her any good. We spent about 20 minutes last night discussing a previous post that she "didn't get." So I told the story again, nearly verbatim. I was essentially reading her the story aloud. THEN she got it. So it is in that spirit that I tell you today's funny story...slowed down for mom!

A few weeks ago I had a terrible time trying to redeem an offer from Pepsi. They were running a promotion where 1 in every 6 bottles had a "Buy One Get One Free" offer under their lid. But when I tried to redeem it, EVERY PLACE I took it said, "We don't take those here." Every place. Including the place where I bought the original beverage.

(How you doing Mom? You still with me? Any questions so far?)

When Jen and I were traveling to Iowa yesterday she brought along those bottle lids with the thought of redeeming them on unsuspecting merchants along the way. We stopped at a place about 50 miles outside of Chicago and I sprang my trap on the unsuspecting locals.

(No Mom, it wasn't an actual trap...it's a figure of speech. A euphemisms. A metaphor. A...nevermind. I didn't trap anyone! I don't have a convenience store owner pelt in the car.)

I walked up to the counter, set down my two Pepsi products and casually threw the lid in with them. The cashier looked at the lid and said, "We don't take those...they're only good in Chicago."

(See Mom, the guy in the hinterlands thought that the lids were only redeemable in Chicago and all the Chicago merchants were telling me that they wouldn't redeem them. It's not picture-perfect irony, but it's frustrating. And any good humor is derived from a protagonist who is put through the wringer. In this case that protagonist would be me and the wringer is the run around that I'm getting from any and all merchants where the Pepsi lids are concerned. You get it? Mom? You know what? I'll just read this to you instead!)