Saturday, October 27, 2007

Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures

Twenty three minutes after midnight, in a hotel room in Ogallala, Nebraska, I got a craving for a crunchy chip. Since the vending machine was practically right outside our door, I decided to venture out myself, rather than asking Ed to go, which is what I normally do.

When hanging out at a hotel, I'm typically clad in a tank top, shorts and slipper socks; and since I'm lounging, I'm also braless. Well, except for the "built-in" shelf bra in the tank top...you girls know the kind I mean.

So here I am, in the hallway, getting a Diet Coke and a bag of Doritos; a chip I don't even necessarily like, but it was the lesser of all the evils in the vending machine. I put my quarters in the slot, punch H-3, the buttons that correspond with my treat, and wait.

Nothing.

The chips are stuck in the coil. Just one edge of the bag, but still stuck. So I give the machine a little jiggle. Nothing.

I bang the heel of my hand on the glass. Nothing.

I pull the machine slightly forward and give it a little shake. Nothing.

Since it's so late, I don't want to make too much noise, but I want my chips, dammit. I shake the machine more violently now. Still nothing. There is no way I'm walking all the way down to the front desk braless, in socks and with unshaven legs to ask for my seventy-five cents back.

So I go back to the room and get Ed, knowing that he's going to give me the evil eye and not want to get out of bed where he was cozily watching TV, to go into the hallway and help me. I tell him my chips are stuck and I need him to shake the machine. Surprisingly, he agrees.

We decide that if we put another seventy-five cents in the machine and choose the bag of chips one row over, they will graze my bag on the way out of their row and help mine to fall from the evil grip of the vending machine. Great idea, but it doesn't work. Because guess what? That bag gets stuck too.

So now I'm down a $1.50 and I still have no freakin' Doritos. Ed starts shaking the machine; lightly at first, gently back and forth and then with a bit more force, pulling it away from the wall, leaning it so far forward that I can no longer see the items through the glass. I'm still worried about the noise, looking around to make sure no one sees or hears us and found the coast still clear.

Oh, did I mention that Ed is in his underwear? Yup. No shirt, no shoes, no socks; just checkered boxer shorts and wild, pre-sleep hair.

The noise was getting louder and I was on the verge of giving up, when one bag dropped! Another quick look around, more banging and shaking and the other bag drops. Just as we turn to go back to the room, we see the front desk clerk peering down the hallway at us. We pretend we don't see him and scurry back to the room with our loot.

I laughed to myself when I imagined the scene that poor kid witnessed; two out of shape truck drivers, in their underwear, shaking food out of the vending machine at midnight.

If it were not for my fabulous new lipgloss, it might have been a very ugly scene.

6 comments:

MeHereNow said...

HeHeHe! Brilliant story for me to read on a Sunday morning! Of course it was the "fabulous" lip gloss that caught the desk clerk's attention!

Anonymous said...

hahaha

Becka Robinson said...

bravo

Geggie said...

THAT is hilarious (and totally something I would do)!

Sauntering Soul said...

Wow, I have such a vision in my head now....

Too funny!

Michelle | Bleeding Espresso said...

Hilarious, and in case it ever happens again, I've solved this dilemma by actually just getting another bag of the same chips (the ones stuck). There's a chance the second one will get stuck too, but that hasn't happened to me yet...unless of course 2 bags of Doritos is just too much ;)