Besides supplying the brain-altering surge of caffeine and sugar that puts me in a near-hallucinatory frenetic state (and subsequently renders me catatonic 2 hours later), it also boasts unique and wonderful information on the outside of the bottle: nutritional information, a "best by" date, a mysterious recycling code number, and the obvious brand label.
However, as I twisted off the cap, I was dimly aware that I might just be the "1 IN 8 SCORES: Buy (1) 20 oz., get (1) 20 oz free!" Woohoo! Unfortunately when I twisted off the cap I found I was not the winner, all I saw was "Please, try again."
As disappointing as this is, its a far cry better than Coke contests, where the outside of a Coke bottle claims by twisting off the lid you could win any number of great prizes. Twisting off the top of a Coke bottle reveals something like this:
75xv9
11z7b
As though by drinking Coke products you suddenly become fluent in a strange WWII army code and you can find out if you won. The truth is its all a not-so-cleverly disguised attempt to force you to log on to their website, www.mycokerewards.com, and enter personal information so they can sell your
But I digress. The point is, I got to thinking about that Mt. Dew lid and it's taunting "Please Try Again" and I came to the conclusion that by and large that's some of the finest advice I have ever been given. Although I don't normally go looking for advice on the underside of Pepsi products, well, there it was.
We as humans are inherently failures. We learn to walk by standing up, taking a cautious step, and falling. Then we try again. And again. And eventually we are sprinting. We take classes and (with a few exceptions) make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. Maybe I misdefine us when I call us failures, because failure implies the endgame is one of non-success. What I mean to say is that we are a creature that by and large practices doing a thing unsuccessfully many times before it is eventually accomplished with success.
This differs from most other animals, for example housecats. Ever watched a cat sit there, twitching its tail as it ponders something, then in a blur it bounces upward and performs a highly acrobatic jump which involves three or four different bounces before casually landing on a perch? How many times did the cat practice that move? Probably none, and it probably got it right.
Or think about a squirrel jumping from tree to tree...it doesn't miss that branch very often.
So we as a species are uniquely prone to fail. Not total failure, just individual failings that stack up until they are crowned by a single success.
So this Mt. Dew lid, though its message was completely innocuous, reminds me what we all should remember: when you mess up, please, try again.
And never forget: 1 in 8 scores.
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