Turning bottled water into wine

Hillbilly Mom's recent troubles revolving around her attempts to score hard drugs in the broad daylight reminded me of my similar exploits in high school, and today I'm going to regale bore you with the story. Sherman, program the Wayback Machine for 1993, because here we go:

My High School had an open campus policy during lunch, meaning that those of us with the means (or the will) were free to leave school and escape the culinary terrorism that is a school cafeteria. Being a typical broke-ass teenager, I couldn't afford to be heading over to Burger King and dropping $20 on lunch every week, so I made do with the next best thing: EZ Mart. During each brief hour of freedom, I would pop over to the EZ Mart down the street from school and score some poor white-boy drugs. (that's caffeine and sugar, for the unenlightened.) While I never took the occasion to weez a little juice, I did manage to faithfully purchase the same thing every day: 1 12oz can of Dr. Pepper and 1 Twix. Now we're getting to the point here, (and in the second paragraph no less - I'm on fire today!) because throughout my career of lunch-hour excursions I never once paid the same amount of money. Day to day, the prices were up and down like ferrets on crack. I don't have exact records of course (because I didn't have Excel back then) but I remember paying anywhere from 89 cents to a buck-fitty for my lunchtime fix.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I came extremely close to missing this retail phenomenon. The first time I sidled up to the register with my drugs of choice, the total came to exactly one dollar. I thought "Hey, this isn't a bad deal - I don't even have to bring along spare change!" I was completely hooked from that moment... because of the erotic promise of exact change. Looking back, I might have been able to get clean if it had been $1.12 or $1.03... but there was no way I could deny President Washington the satisfaction of flying a solo mission.

Once the mysterious pricing at the EZ Mart became apparent, I dubbed it "EZ Mart Economics," and set about trying to explain the reasoning behind the seemingly random behavior. My first theory was that prices were higher on friday to rake in some extra profit from weekend traffic, but that was shot full of holes when I paid 89 cents that week. For a few weeks I was baffled, but then I noticed that neither my Pepper nor my Twix were sporting price tags - and they never had. Now this was in the days before every cash register in America could afford the bling of a laser barcode reader, so what was obviously happening was that the clerk was ringing up my purchases from memory... and therein we have the solution to my tale. Unfortunately, it doesn't involve pulling a rubber mask off of anyone, or a bunch of meddling kids and their dog.
The chain-smoking leathery grandma or the Dante Hicks wannabe jockeying the register was just guessing at what I should be charged, if there was even that much thought put into it. Considering that the filter of a reasonable person's (or convenience store clerk's) idea of what the drugs should cost, it's especially fascinating that I never got a repeat price.

So to you, Hillbilly Mom, I say "Enjoy the ride - you've only just begun!" To the kids in America I say "Kids under 6, don't drink and drive. And drugs, stay out of school!" As for the rest of you, I'm speechless. Thanks for reading my meaningless drivel... now I'mma go score me a Twix and crank some Go-Go's tunes. Rock, Rock ON!