Remember when you were a kid and the breakfast cereal companies were always advertising cool stuff you could send off for if you saved up enough boxtops? Well, if you grew up when I did you should.
Well, I never actually accumulated the sufficient number and followed through, because I didn’t have that kind of attention span when I was a kid. Which is probably what they were counting on: They wanted me to bug my Mom to buy another box, and then maybe one more, and then forget about it — and then they wouldn’t have to send me the realistic sub that dives and surfaces and fires torpedoes, or whatever.
But just to show you how much my character has improved since then, I finally followed through. I just collected stickers for all eight Starbucks bold coffees — a different one highlighted each week, and you had to buy a cup to get a sticker.
I got my last sticker yesterday, and today I turned in my completed little booklet thingy and got the bold coffee of my choice.
I chose the 100 percent Fair Trade-certified Estima, which just makes me feel all kinda good about myself.
I really have a tremendous sense of accomplishment. Mock me if you will — call me a hauler for showing off my coffee — but I do.
An artistic note: I shot that picture above against the background of the bed of my truck, which I think looks kind of cool. I’m going to try that more often.
What’s even cooler is using a reusable cup….
Yep, we saved enough box tops that after awhile, my Mom began to collect these plates with a picture of some wheat on them.
When we cleaned out the house 40 years later to get it ready for sale, she was still using those dishes.
In fact most of her kitchen stuff was still the same. Wow, was that hard, cleaning out a 50 year old house that Dad had built, and putting it up for sale to, in the end, some college kids. A crying shame for the home of such a married couple to be turned over to such a fate. Wow, did I get off the subject!
Nice post, Herb.
One of the thought-provoking ideas in the minimalism movement is how we spend so much of our lives getting things that then our children have to get rid of. Sounds like your mom was pretty frugal, though!
Oddly, my parents still use the set of Funk & Wagnall’s encylcopedias Mom got at the grocery store, one a week, back in the late 1960s. They also use The Google–they each ahve computers, but the books are handy when a dinner table question arises.