Vending machine mayhem!

At about midnight this morning, Meg drops by, having just returned from work in Long Island. She doesn't live in my dorm, but a block or so away, ever-so-barely off-campus. She stays for a little while, chatting with me and Jose; generally proving to one and all that yes, there is such a thing as too much espresso. She was a hyper little thing! But at any rate, quarter of one or thereabout she asks me to walk her home. Iona college having the highest per-capita murder rate of any place in the world, ever, forever, I of course agree to be here protector for the nonce, and usher her safely home. Leisurely stroll both ways, I arrive back in my residence hall at about one. Thus, the fun begins.

I decided, in my infinite wisdom and near-infinite thirst, to obtain a drink from one of the vending machines in the game room. I had tarried over going to the diner before, returning from Meg's, but didn't feel like the full trudge there and back, so I settled. Drink procured, I cast a sidelong glance at the accompanying machine, when I suddenly spied something amazing! Popcorn, handing over the edge! You are surely aware of the style of most snack-based vending machines in use these days: wherein the entering of an alphanumeric code and sufficient monetary compensation will case a spiral to spiral, propelling the desired bag or bar forward just enough to knock it over the edge and into the Pit of Imminent Consumption. Well, the last sap who had tried to get his hands on some popcorn had evidently failed, as there was a back perched, just barely on the edge of the popcorn section. 'Brilliant!' I thought to myself, 'I could very well get two bags of popcorn for the price of one! Or, in a worst case scenario, I get one bag, and the second finds itself in a similar perch.'

I had failed to identify the correct worst-case scenario. That was a mildly-annoying-case scenario. It would be worse if, say, neither bag actually saw fit to enter the pit. And what do you know? For there is a rim around the entrance to the pit, in order to accommodate the varied mechanisms designed to keep folks from reaching up and snagging the lower-tier items, and said rim prevented the popcorn from hitting the bottom. Because, as I soon realized, popcorn is very light, and has no business whatsoever in a vending machine that requires a bag to hit bottom with sufficient force to bend slightly. So I end up with two bags of popcorn, and no way to access them. The catch twenty-two of the situation, of course, is that I could have simply reached up and grabbed them if it weren't constructed to prevent me from reaching up and grabbing them, and if it weren't made like that, I wouldn't have needed to reach up and grab them!

"So where," I assume you're asking yourself, "is Ed going with this?" Well, honestly, nowhere in particular. There will be no moral at the end, and almost certainly no nudity, so if you're expecting anything other than a mildly amusing tale about how my attempt at free popcorn netted me cookies, Twix, and no spoon, you might want to continue reading. Ah, Hell, I'll condense things a little for your benefit. Now, to recap. Popcorn: PERCHED! Ed: ENRAGED! Vanilla cookies: VERY CLOSE! Yes, there were mini-cookies hovering right over one of my desired bags. Cookies are weightier than popcorn, right? Right? In retrospect, pushing something from the bottom row, which only had twenty centimeters to fall, was no the wisest of all possible choices. And yet, at the time, I was astonished beyond all reasonable belief when the new bag found a dainty little nest on the back of the popcorn, and waited there. No push through, no shift sideways, not even any damn cookies. And now I'm out eighty cents each on snacks I didn't even want all that much, but now it's become a point of pride. I opened and closed the retrieval bin many, many times, hoping that the movement of the theft-prevention device would help. It didn't. I was almost set to give up, when I noticed something wonderful! In the same column as the cookies nestled in popcorn, but several rows up, were Twix. Oh yeah... it's a plural brand name...

"Of course! The same general idea behind the cookies would hold true for Twix, only more so! That pair of happy sticks has a ways to go before it strikes paydirt: if this doesn't work, I'll just start crying!" I said to no one in particular or at all. And, after saying a brief prayer to all the gods who might have some say in vending machines (especially Loki), I let my seventy-five cents fly, and found myself within moments to be the proud owner of cookies and Twix. The Twix worked on the cookies! And yet... the popcorn remains? The popcorn remains!

There are times when one cuts one's losses. There are times when one accepts fate, and accepts the accuracy of vending-machine karma. There are times when one shoves a plastic spoon up a narrow metal slit in order to turn a bag of popcorn slightly sideways so it'll fall into a hole.

Guess what time it is.

I'm eating popcorn.

I WON!