You may remember Andy Rooney. He was the white-haired, unruly-eyebrowed curmudgeon who offered cranky weekly commentary on “60 Minutes,” years ago. He didn’t always use this exact phrase, but in my mind, his remarks always opened — in his characteristically nasal, whining sort of voice — with, “Did you ever wonder why…?”
I’ve thought about Andy Rooney quite a bit while we’ve been on the road. Sooo many people and situations behave in ways and for reasons completely alien to me, and often annoyingly so (milk-of-human-kindness though I try to be). Know what I mean?
Consider, for example, vending machines. Specifically, for my purposes here, the sort of vending machines with a glass front — so you can see the contents, but must actually deposit money in order to get something: a bottle of water, a can of tea, a, well, a Yoo-Hoo or whatever. (Aside: we do not drink Yoo-Hoo.) It seems fair trade, right? Make your selection, pay your money, get the product.
Until going on this trip, I never thought much about these vending machines. Since then, though, I’ve noticed them quite a bit, and not merely out of curiosity. Here’s why — and I direct your attention to the photo below:
Imagine that you yourself have stocked this vending machine. Proud of yourself, probably. It all looks so, well, so neat, eh? All the bottles and cans are leaning the same way, at about the same angle. And you’ve even been clever enough to turn the bottles of Gatorade (bottom right) upside-down, so they don’t get jammed by the coiled wire which dispenses them when their number is selected.
Now imagine that you are a consumer, with the need — at least the intention — to get a very specific sort of water out of the machine. You can see you’ve got, uh, five bottles of Saratoga and two bottles of Pellegrino to select from. Nope. You don’t want any of them. You might or might not want that oddball one, though — the one in slot #45.
The question is: what is it?
The only way to identify it is to, well, to buy the damned thing so you even know what it is you’ve just bought.
Andy Rooney would have understood.
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