Soda Machine Gifts

This morning I did not drink my one cup of coffee. It is boring at work and I need to try to stay awake so I decided to give the affordable soda machine a visit. It is a $.50 machine. I reached into my wallet and pulled a dollar bill out. I saw a note on the machine that said someone in customer service got a half empty can of soda recently and was asking the soda machine man (whoever he is) for their money back. Hmmm.... should I gamble or not?

Not only that, I have within the past couple weeks come to the machine with a dollar bill and the machine not even attempt to pull it in. Finally, the machine took my dollar bill! Lucky me. Dr. Pepper can is cold and full. Nice. Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching! Nice. Got two quarters back just like you're supposed to.

Went to glance at the quarters since they felt new and behold 2 new state quarters I haven't seen yet! Score. After leaving the darkened storage room where the trusty soda machine works I entered back into my work area trying to figure out the states.

"Did my eyes decieve me?" Blink. Blink. "Are you kidding me?... For real?"

There they were. One quarter for Guam and one quarter for Puerto Rico! The Guam one sorta looked like Florida for a second.


Now I'm not all into civics and public governance nor am I a numatist by any means but I had to wonder if those territories are states now. Imagine: I put a dollar bill into the soda machine and walaaaa the United States has two more states!

I don't mind what images get put on quarters. I just wonder when the Canada and Mexico quarters are coming out?

There are two things to remember in this adventure: (1) I use credit cards way too often to notice that these two new quarters have been out an entire 9, almost 10 months already. They read 2009. (2) If your soda machine gives you a Delaware quarter where the horse has no tail... keep it. Story: Delaware was one of the first state quarters issued (it seems almost a decade ago). I remember looking at one I had. It looked funny to me at first. Then I realized why. The horse didn't have a flippin' tail. I showed my brother Andy. We went on our merry way. Within the week after finding that quarter odd I heard on the news that there was an error on a batch of Delaware quarters that got released to the public and that if someone found one it was worth $500. Crazy. I looked all over the house to try and find that thing to no avail. Not a good adventure. Today, I think, made up for that loss. I paid a dollar into a soda machine, got a Dr. Pepper (est. 1885), and the USA got two new states. Not bad.... not bad at all.

[September 26 edit add on] Let's make it three things to remember instead of two. (3) I think I know of a better "soda machine" with better gifts than this one at work.