Monday, December 22, 2008

To the kind person who left three liters of grape Shasta on my porch

Here are a few items that occurred to me in the moments following the delivery of your gift:
  1. We drink diet coke at our house. If you'd like to leave some holiday cheer in the future, please keep this in mind.
  2. We have three little kids that go to bed around 8:00 p.m. Dropping off three liters of sticky purple disgustingness at 7:45 p.m. made it impossible to get our four-year-old, who is difficult to get to bed to begin with, to go to bed without first having some. With said belly full of sugary crap, it makes it that much more difficult to get him to go to sleep.
  3. You left the "gift" anonymously. Is that because you were embarrassed about giving us grape Shasta? What's the point of giving the gift anonymously anyway? Or was it that you didn't want toxic purple soda in your house, so you re-gifted it to me? If you didn't want it, you could have just thrown it away.
  4. When I opened the bottle--which I didn't intend to do, but my hand was forced as explained in item 2--it sprayed all over the place, running off of the countertop and underneath the dishwasher. I didn't realize it before, but taking the base plate off of my dishwasher so I could clean the hardwood floor underneath was exactly how I wanted to spend some of my evening. I can't thank you enough. By the way, was the bottle shaken because you slipped on the snowy sidewalks and fell? Because if that's the case, I'm really sorry. I promise I am.
  5. After reluctantly giving some to my kids and glad-heartedly cleaning up the mess it caused, I dumped the rest down the drain and put the empty in the recycling bin. Now that I've vented, perhaps I'll go relax with an icy glass of diet coke. By the way, did you know that if you spill diet coke, it isn't sticky and it's actually quite easy to clean up? Just wondering.
Now that I've had a few minutes to cool down, I realize my reaction may be a bit harsh. If no malice was intended and this really did come from someone trying to be nice, then thank you. But if, as I think is the more likely scenario, this was perpetrated by someone intending it as a prank, I probably had it coming.

2 comments:

  1. Grape Shasta = Christmas cheer solvent. Noted.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Neighbor,

    Sorry about the Grape Shasta. It used to have a tag on it that said, "Have a Grape Day", but that must have fallen off on the way up to your door.

    The kids thought about what would be a perfect gift for neighbor gifts this year, and they picked out the grape soda (their favorite). We told them that it had to be non-caffeinated this year. Last year we found out too late that not all Root Beers are caffeine free. Someone kept calling and hanging up on us after last year's deliveries.

    We had 38 neighbor gifts to deliver, and we bought all of the the 2 liter bottles at Winco. We had to get 13 of the 3 liter bottles, and so we tried to pick families with young children for those.

    Our youngest daughter was shaking the bottles and saying "Ho Ho Ho" over and over again in the car. We didn't have the heart to shut her down. We didn't think about the fizz. It was so cute watching her. We got pictures for her scrapbook.

    We know what you mean about cleaning it up. Be sure to do a really thorough job, because we found that grape soda really attracts the little sugar ants.

    Again, sorry about the 3 liters. Next year we'll be sure to keep the size down to the 2 liters. They're easier to pour.

    ReplyDelete