I’m not going to bore you with all the details of how awesome my trip to California was. But I will share this truly hilarious story. Something that, honestly, only happens in my life. And maybe Christina’s.
On our way back from San Diego, we had a connecting flight though Dallas. Or so we thought. American Airlines had other plans (or lack thereof). Instead of flying home on Sunday night and getting ready for the work week, we spent eight hours in San Diego’s airport before flying into Dallas. They were nice [I say, begrudgingly] and gave us vouchers for a hotel, dinner and breakfast so we could get some rest and refuel before our early flight on Monday. We trotted on to the Holiday Inn, whose hallways looked like this:
Remind you of anything? Say, a certain scene from The Shining?
The Holiday Inn was actually quite nice. Two queen beds and a couch with a hideaway bed, so each of us had our own place to sleep. Christina and I celebrated like this [PS- Sorry I jumped all over your bed, Steph.]:
Once we got settled down in, our free Domino’s Pizza arrived. Never have I been so excited about Domino’s Pizza. So, Christina and I set out for cokes. From the elusive vending machines. Christina puts in the $1.25, pushes the Diet Coke button. Mr. Pibb comes out. We stood there for a solid two minutes, debating on whether that was a fluke, or if all of the slots are off. We went with fluke and tried again. Inserted $1.25. Pushed Diet Coke. Got another Mr. Pibb.
This is where you question our sobriety. Were we drunk? No. Were we delirious? Absolutely.
I think we laughed for three or four minutes before finally deciding to try again [Did I mention we were delirious?]. This time, we counted the number of slots between the actual Mr. Pibb button and the Diet Coke button. We pressed what we thought was an appropriate substitute button for Diet Coke, and… we got a Sprite.
So, $3.75 gone and a handful of Mr. Pibbs and Sprite to bear, we marched over to the front desk to alert the man of the error. He replies, “Oh, I know! Isn’t that crazy?” WHAT. You knew the vending machine was off? Shouldn’t there be a sign somewhere? But, he was nice and let us trade the cokes for some they had in the hotel snack shop. So we were happy.
I had completely forgotten about all of that until tonight, when Stephanie emailed me this link and said, “This is only appropriate after the problems you two faced at the Holiday Inn.”
Maybe we should have left a kind note, reminding the people to fix the machine. Or at least put up a camera to see how much money people waste trying to guess which is the correct button.
And that, my friends, is the story of my life.
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