Gimme Soda

When I was young enough that I didn't habitually carry anything in my pockets and a quarter seemed nearly as large as my entire palm, I patronized vending machines quite a bit. An inextricable part of my memories from searing Arizona summers is that trip to the machine, wherever it was found, to put in fifty cents and get a cold can of soda in return. I don't imagine that surviving the very climate in which I was forged would have been possible otherwise.

It's just fascinating to contemplate the outsized value I then put on a can of soda. When you think about it, the profit margin on cans of soda at the price for which they're sold in a vending machine is obscenely high. They're not worth remotely near that much, and yet those sodas were like gold to me. It was an awfully good day when I had cause to want a soda and both the money and opportunity necessary to buy one.

Soda in plastic bottles was somehow less desirable. It's attributable partly to the less appetizing taste and partly also perhaps to the greater expense of a 20 ounce soda as compared to that of a twelve ounce can. It seems to me that the plastic was maybe a better insulator and kept the soda cold longer, but that made it all the less appealing. Whether plastic or aluminum, a soda was not long for this world once purchased, and the feel of the freezing metal on the palm was a gratifying byproduct.

Today I seldom buy from such machines. I sometimes get a single soda from the grocery store, and usually have one with a meal at restaurants, but it's mostly something in my past with rare exceptions. Just such an exception has come up. I mostly drink water at home, but it does not seem likely to answer the need as I write this. I'd like to buy something that comes at a better price, but I also am not eager to leave the house, and my building has a machine in the lobby. I guess convenience is what it's all about.