Phil Elmore
Master of Arts
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2002
- Messages
- 1,514
- Reaction score
- 54
I had a lot of time to think while I was trapped in the vending machine Wednesday morning.
There's a certain stark awareness of how others perceive you that suddenly becomes yours when you're trapped in a vending machine. You find yourself looking far ahead to the future, when anthropologists in the year 3,000 find your ossified corpse. You picture them puzzling over the strange device in which your left arm is encased, pondering the mysterious inscription, Refreshing Coca Cola, concocting bizarre theories.
"Clearly," one of them would say, smoothing the folds of his aluminum-foil jumpsuit, "this individual's abrasive social commentary prompted sanctions from the society in which he lived. We know 'Coca Cola' is some form of acid, which our scientists have used successfully to dissolve ancient samples of bone, organic matter, and small combustion-engine automobiles. Like the ancient stocks or pillory, this box of acid was clamped around the wrist of the offender, the transgressor left in the public square or the nearest office kitchenette, the better to have his punishment viewed by his peers."
I am not making this up, incidentally. When the first bottle of Minute Maid Orange Juice that was the source of my predicament came tumbling down, I reached into the machine to retrieve it. At that moment, the machine inexplicably released a second juice, which crashed into the plastic trapdoor and wedged itself in the opening, trapping my entire hand inside the machine. It hurt quite a bit, in fact.
As I stood there, crouching, one hand desperately clutching at the plastic bottle, I experienced a moment of clarity, picturing coworkers finding me trapped there like a monkey with his fist closed around a tasty morsel in a jar, too stupid to let go of the treat in order to escape. I discarded the notion of gnawing myself free. I prepared myself to offer the feeble excuse, "It's not what it looks like."
The problem was that it was exactly what it looked like. I was a grown man who had managed, through sheer comedy of error, to get trapped in a vending machine. I am almost certain that had I died like that, late night talk show hosts would have laughed at my corpse, concocting skits in which they send their terrified interns with fistfuls of change in pursuit of vended bottles of Coke and bags of Skittles.
I earned that free bottle of juice, I tell you.
There's a certain stark awareness of how others perceive you that suddenly becomes yours when you're trapped in a vending machine. You find yourself looking far ahead to the future, when anthropologists in the year 3,000 find your ossified corpse. You picture them puzzling over the strange device in which your left arm is encased, pondering the mysterious inscription, Refreshing Coca Cola, concocting bizarre theories.
"Clearly," one of them would say, smoothing the folds of his aluminum-foil jumpsuit, "this individual's abrasive social commentary prompted sanctions from the society in which he lived. We know 'Coca Cola' is some form of acid, which our scientists have used successfully to dissolve ancient samples of bone, organic matter, and small combustion-engine automobiles. Like the ancient stocks or pillory, this box of acid was clamped around the wrist of the offender, the transgressor left in the public square or the nearest office kitchenette, the better to have his punishment viewed by his peers."
I am not making this up, incidentally. When the first bottle of Minute Maid Orange Juice that was the source of my predicament came tumbling down, I reached into the machine to retrieve it. At that moment, the machine inexplicably released a second juice, which crashed into the plastic trapdoor and wedged itself in the opening, trapping my entire hand inside the machine. It hurt quite a bit, in fact.
As I stood there, crouching, one hand desperately clutching at the plastic bottle, I experienced a moment of clarity, picturing coworkers finding me trapped there like a monkey with his fist closed around a tasty morsel in a jar, too stupid to let go of the treat in order to escape. I discarded the notion of gnawing myself free. I prepared myself to offer the feeble excuse, "It's not what it looks like."
The problem was that it was exactly what it looked like. I was a grown man who had managed, through sheer comedy of error, to get trapped in a vending machine. I am almost certain that had I died like that, late night talk show hosts would have laughed at my corpse, concocting skits in which they send their terrified interns with fistfuls of change in pursuit of vended bottles of Coke and bags of Skittles.
I earned that free bottle of juice, I tell you.
