After many years of struggling along as part of the great unwashed masses, I have finally climbed the ladder from everyman to elite. I am now officially a 1 percenter.
Even the air smells sweeter up here. When I walk down the street, women want me and men want to be me. They can feel the waves of confidence, success and desirability emanating from me as I strut like John Travolta in the opening scene of “Saturday Night Fever,” only better.
Why the sudden change from invisible to irresistible? Gold, baby, gold.
In recent weeks, some gold has come into my possession. It’s not much, just enough to make the world sit up and take notice.
I don’t feel guilty about it either. It’s not like I inherited my gold from my father. No, I worked hard for my gold. In fact, I invested a lot of time, money and calories in the process. I definitely earned my gold.
It came in the mail last week, and it’s so beautiful. I can’t stop looking at it and admiring it and feeling oh so special.
I hold it in my hands and gently caress it as I read the words written on the front: “Starbucks Rewards, Doug Showalter, Member since 2013.”
That’s right, peasants, I am now a Starbucks gold card holder. And it’s incredible.
Not only does my shiny gold card make me the envy of … well, everyone, it also earns me twice the reward stars that non-precious-metal members earn. Plus, one day a month I have a Double Star Day. If I visit Starbucks and buy my usual mocha on that day, I earn four stars for every dollar I spend instead of two, while all the little people are still earning only one star per dollar spent.
And it gets even better. Once I accumulate 125 stars, I can get almost anything on the menu for free.
I am living the caffeine dream!
Yes, I am aware that anyone who wants to buy enough coffee can get their own gold card. But just give me this one, please, if only for a little while.
On another topic, I received a clever Orchid a couple of weeks ago referencing something I wrote in my column about deciding to study math again.
In that column I wrote, “We were told that solving quadratic equations and writing geography proofs would train our brains to think logically, even if we were never called on to do either of these things after graduation.”
The Orchid I received read, “Orchids to Doug Showalter’s article on math demonstrating your need to study it as you learn to write geography proofs, from a senior citizen.”
Apparently, this senior citizen believed I had erred and written geography when I meant to write geometry. I can see how that would seem to be the case, since geometry proofs are indeed a part of high school math.
But what the reader didn’t know, and what I obviously failed to explain sufficiently, is that I, in fact, did mean to write geography instead of geometry.
Back at Speedway High School, the geography teachers were tough. In fact they were downright mean. For example, if a question on the geography final asked, “Bolivia is on what continent?” I couldn’t get away with just writing South America on my test paper.
No. No. No. I had to PROVE that Bolivia is in South America!
I’m just kidding. My Orchid giver was correct. I messed up big time.
What can I say? Even Starbucks gold card members make mistakes, albeit far fewer than those who can only dream of owning gold.
