Vending Machine Karma

The Pepsi machine spouts nothing but diet. The Coke machine's SOLD OUT lights aren't working, meaning it's something of a carbonic acid roulette to put money in it. My guess is that all it has left is cola.

As Jon Voight's character in Oliver Stone's U-TURN says: "And bring me a Dr. Pepper. No Colas! You know colas ain't anything but brown sugar water."

I shouldn't be drinking this crap. I should be drinking water. Que sera, sera. Bottled water is good for the bottle, because when I'm in the hills of Pennsylvania or in the ravines of Upstate NY, I happily refill the same bottle over and over again until the bottle takes on that chalky film.

Not here. There's been a drought recently, and though it's rained quite a bit recently, I just keep having these pictures of swampy mucky water turning bright, clean and chlorinated by a treatment plant. It's probably all bullshit. I'm probably drinking as many or more contaminants out of the bottle than I am from the tap. I probably have more contaminants up north as a result of acid-rain wash than I do in the south where the wind and rain come predominately from the relatively clean air of the Carribean.

But whatever. So it's a mental thing. Regardless, I want some soda.

I'm working at the motel, and I have to go out on property to help someone out with their room key. When I come back, I remember the other vending machines in the parking garage. I make a quick stop by and pay for a Mountain Dew (something I used to love, then used to abhor, but now I'm back to being able to enjoy one once a week or so).

My extremely decorated green can comes down the chute and I start to walk away. I hear CLUNK, CLUNK, but it's not the kind of clunks the remaining cans make when they settle against the machine's drop-door. These are louder clunks.

Whenever a machine fouls up in an error that leaves me without my dollar AND without my soda, I'm not the person who goes to the desk to complain. I usually just shrug and let it go. If it's a food vending machine and I see my item of choice dangling from the looped coil by a THREAD of its packaging, I might give it a little rattle, but I never beat the thing. It's just not worth it to me.

Tonight though, the machines have repaid my years of understanding and patience. As I suspected, they've been keeping score all along: remembering when they've short-changed me, remembering when they didn't refund my money, and remembering all those times when their metal coils crushed my bag of Skittles in the stead of dropping it to the dull steel chute of freedom.

I found not one, but TWO extra cans of Mountain Dew. The peasant rejoices and gives praise to his machine gods. I recite dipswitch settings in their honor.

01110101-10110011-00001111-01110100-00111110

We mortals might not understand that prayer, but trust me, I just brought a tear to this web-server's optical data port.