The Empty Soda Can

We just got back from an adoption conference in Franklin, Tennessee. The last class we attended—and were asked to present in—dealt with grief and loss. I suppose that, given our history, the presenter figured that we’re experts. Throughout the course of trying to build our family, we’ve experienced many kinds of grief and loss: • We’ve suffered through severe infertility, such that we’ve only managed to get pregnant four times in almost 13 years of trying. • We’ve suffered through two early miscarriages, wherein that pregnancy ended almost before it began. • We’ve suffered through a later miscarriage, when our son Daniel was perfectly formed but born much too early and we got to hold our lifeless child in our hands before burying him in a tiny casket. • Several times, we’ve suffered when an adoption opportunity fell through because, despite desperately wanting to adopt that child, the answer to our prayers was a resounding “no.” • Several times, we’ve suffered when an adopt...

Many years ago, Chevrolet released a car called the “Nova.” My wife, Anna, was one of the many individuals to own such a car: a car that was great for a while, but made us very sad when I had to drive my then-fiancée to work for several weeks—and very happy to have AAA Plus when we had to tow it just over 100 miles from her old apartment in Bloomington to our first home in Lafayette. She would eventually get the car fixed and sell it to her younger sister, who has herself long since moved on to a newer (and thus, more reliable) vehicle. Despite all this, however, my wife generally enjoyed her Chevy Nova for the time that she had it. Until that fateful day that it had a major problem (I think it was the alternator), it had been a pretty good little car. Unfortunately, this wonderful little hatchback’s success was—shall we say— limited outside the United States. It’s not that it wasn’t dependable; it was. It’s just that when they tried to export it to Latin America, they wasted a lot of ...

Okay, so this is old news, but I just thought I’d share it with anyone that hadn’t seen it yet: Microsoft and Burger King decided to get together and promote last month’s release of Microsoft Windows 7. The promotion? Well, you’ve heard of a Double Whopper ® ; you’ve probably even heard of a Triple Whopper. So what better way to promote Windows 7 than with a Septuple Whopper? Japanese mafia hit: ¥50.000.000 Windows 7 Burger: ¥777 Knowing a deal when you see one: priceless.

Remember those old Apple ads, back in the ’90s, that encouraged us to “Think Different”? I certainly don’t mean to put the cart before the horse, but I’m wondering if I took that counsel a bit too much to heart, because advertising just doesn’t seem to work on me these days. Consider the following, all three of which happened in the last hour. As I was driving down the road with my family, I saw an ad for a car. I don’t have the slightest clue what kind of car it was (which says something about the overall effectiveness of the ad), but the tag line was: “Hate Sitting In Traffic Even More.” I was like, “Okay… so you’re saying that if I buy this car, the unenjoyable parts of my life will become even less enjoyable? Why wouldn’t I just save a couple Chases and use the car I already have?” Anna, it must be said, understood the ad as I can only assume it was intended: “This car is such a pleasure to drive, sitting in traffic will be horrible by comparison.” More power to her, but do you rea...

It was a couple of months ago that my wife, Anna, decided that we should start purchasing Dean’s ® brand milk over the store brand, because she heard somewhere that, unlike store brands, Dean’s contains no hormones. As luck would have it, about a week later, CVS started having sales on Dean’s milk, pretty much every week—sales so good that it’s now actually less expensive than the store brand—so we started taking advantage. This morning, I was sitting at the table, innocently eating my breakfast, when I noticed that Dean’s has actually begun advertising this rumored fact. You probably can’t read it in the photo, but that golden, rounded fourteen-point star contains the following words: Our Farmers Pledge Not to Use Artificial Growth Hormones* So I’m thinking, “Cool! Anna was right! There’s no artificial growth hormones! How consumer-conscious of them!” But then I notice the asterisk. “Hmmm…” I think, using those exact words. “What could that be for?” I look around the label—it re...