It’s funny how some of us (like yours truly) shrug off
conventional learning but can be like sponges when it comes to absorbing
lessons learned in the oddest of ways.
So it was with my Snapple cap. Last week I had a hankering
for raspberry iced tea, so I wandered over to the corner market near my office
and purchased a drink. Just a few minutes later I was sipping a deliciously
refreshing beverage when I noticed that the writing inside the cap mentioned
Portland.
The fact that I was able to decipher the message is notable
because I have been attempting to adapt to wearing contacts. Sometimes I can
read with them and sometimes everything looks like a big blur. Either the
contacts or my brain need an adjustment. In the meantime reading is a minor
challenge, especially tiny words on a round piece of metal. If you’re wondering
how many words fit on a bottle cap, the answer is just enough to get my
attention.
According to my raspberry iced tea bottle cap, our little
city of Portland was named before Portland, Oregon. That’s right, folks, we
were first even though everyone assumes the Portland you’re talking about is on
the other side of the country. Ironically, Portland, Oregon earned its
designation with a coin toss.
I know, right?
Apparently, there were two guys who owned a bunch of land on
the waterfront in Oregon, and they both wanted to name the territory after
their hometown. You already know one of them was Portland, Maine. The other
(get this) was Boston, Massachusetts. They decided to flip a coin for the
decision. Portland won. Sort of.
I know this is the unpolished version of the story but you
can look it up and correct me if you’d like. No, wait - please don’t. This is
still more accurate than my joke telling.
I can’t tell you how many times Spouse has run into problems
at various jobs because of that “other” Portland, from packages being delivered
to the wrong state to travel agents almost booking him on a return trip three
time zones away. If he had been there he would have rigged that dang coin in
favor of the Boston native.
There are tons of other tidbits of information to be found
on Snapple bottle caps. Some are very surprising (penguins can jump six feet)
and some are… well, just plain strange (a duck has three eyelids). They are all
potential conversation starters – or stoppers, I suppose. What impresses me is
that I remember many of them. Honestly, it surprises me when I remember
anything.
But this isn’t school and there will not be a test, so I
feel perfectly qualified to even repeat some of what the caps teach me and
share my newfound knowledge with others.
Every day we are bombarded with all sorts of marketing tools
on most things we consume. Whether it’s an eye-catching container, a coupon, or
a UPC code that enters you in a contest, there isn’t much we make contact with
that doesn’t entice us to buy more.
You have to wonder (fine, I have to wonder) why a beverage
company would replace marketing their own product to its clientele with a
little trivia. Maybe they are just hoping to enlighten us. Or maybe there’s a
subliminal sales pitch in each little known fact. What if they’re disguising a
deal within the message that it’s illegal to sing off-key in North Carolina?
What if the cap informing us that one acre of peanuts will make about 30,000
peanut butter sandwiches is designed to make us thirsty?
I do have to say some people take this stuff way too
seriously. It really wasn’t necessary to kick me out of the grocery store. I
was just showing the cashier that there are 293 ways to make change for a
dollar.
My lemonade cap told me so.
No comments:
Post a Comment