You’ll appreciate this story. Hershey’s had a promotion back in August or thereabouts where inside of kit kat candy bars they were giving away prizes. Supposedly, one in a zillion wins something good and eventually you get to the odds of 1-in-3 wins at least something. Well, I happened to buy 10 kit kat candy bars at the local store here because they were on sale 5 for $1. I opened one up and sure enough on the inside it says “you win a free bag of twizzlers”. So I save it and the next day I’m having a kit kat and sure enough again “you win a free bag of twizzlers”. I put it aside and the next day I’m having my daily kit kat and boom “you win a free bag of twizzlers”. I’m sitting there at this point thinking, if 1-in-every-3 wins, I’m getting some other people’s prizes at this point. Day 4, “you win a free bag of twizzlers”. Day 5, “you win a free bag of twizzlers”. Day 6, “you win a free bag of twizzlers”. Day 7, “you win a free bag of twizzlers”. Day 8, “you win a free bag of twizzlers”. Talk about lucky. Unfortunately, I gave 2 kit kats away so we will never know if I won 10 out of 10. I assume I would have but that is beside the point. Now we get to the good part of the story. In order to claim my winnings I had to redeem these kit kat wrappers by signing them “you ever try to sign one of those foil wrappers?”, and mailing them to Hersheys. So I sit down one night and figure what the heck, I’ll make an attempt to get the pen to stick to these wrappers and write up an envelope and mail them in. So I signed all 8 of them, stuck them in a single envelope and mailed them off to Hersheys. I stress the fact that I mailed them in a single envelope, you’ll see why in a second.
So yesterday I came home and looked in the mailbox to find it had a bunch of envelopes in it, which I assumed were bills so I ignored them and picked up the shovel to clean off the sidewalk and my “covered” porch, don’t get me started on the fact that my covered porch has a couple inches of snow on it, that is a completely different story. Anyhow, I shovel away and finally make my way inside, of course forgetting about the fact that I had a pile of envelopes in my mailbox since I left them in there. About 30 minutes later I realize I forgot the mail so I grab the envelopes and throw them on the table and ignore them for a while, because obviously they are just bills and there is no need to look at them right away. Finally, an hour or so later I sit down at the table and decide to look at what I got. The top envelope is from Hershey and is addressed to Twizzlers c/o Eric @ my address ect. Yeah, I know what you are thinking. I wasn’t aware that I lived at Twizzlers either. We’ll just assume that is their way of letting me know that my free twizzlers are inside of this normal size business envelope. I’m actually figuring that it is a free coupon, which I will have to take to the store to redeem. So I put that envelope aside and look at the next one. Yep, you guessed it. It is from Hershey and is addressed to Twizzlers c/o Eric &….etc. As we’ve progressed this far, I’m sure you have picked up on the fact that the next 6 envelopes I open will all be identically addressed. So now I sit here with 8 envelopes from Hershey. You now see why I stressed the fact that I sent them just 1 envelope with 8 wrappers inside. But hold on, I am still not to the best part of the story. Even though 1-in-3 wins and I won 8 out of 8 and even though I sent 1 envelope and got 8 back and even though I paid $2 for 10 candy bars and am getting 8 pounds of twizzlers free to go with it, there is still more to the story to tell. Because if you are following along closely, you realize that I haven’t yet opened these 8 envelopes. I am just assuming there are twizzler coupons inside. Plus, I haven’t beaten to death the fact that I sent them 1 envelope and they sent me 8 back. So I finally get around to opening the first envelope and just like I expected, there is a coupon for one free 16 oz bag of twizzlers. Interestingly enough though, there is something else in the envelope. Do you care to venture a guess? Well, as I look inside I see they sent me a completely blank envelope, WITH A STAMP ON IT. Obviously, Hershey feels if you have to mail in your prize-winning wrapper, that they should reimburse you for the cost of the postage and the envelope. I agree with them 100%. I’ll make the assumption that I don’t have to tell you what was in the other 7 envelopes at this point as you can probably guess there were 7 more coupons for “one free 16 oz bag of twizzlers” and 7 more envelopes with stamps on them. In the end, I got to eat the kit kat bars, which was really all I wanted in the first place, I spent 37 cents to mail in my wrappers, and now I have 8 pounds of twizzlers I can collect from the local grocery store and the next 8 letters I mail will be courtesy of Hershey. You have any idea how what the effects of eating 8 pounds of twizzlers will be?