The Dr Pepper Tower
As many of our friends and family know, my brother and I love Dr Pepper. Yes, we drink other things too, but the DP dominates our beverage intake. When we go grocery shopping, we buy six, nine, or twelve twelve-packs of the stuff. For several months now, we have not bothered to throw away our “fridge packs.” It started off innocently enough; we just left a few at the top of the stairs that leads down to the garage. Trash always goes out through the garage anyway, so it seemed natural. However, we somehow never got around to throwing the things away. And so the pile grew.
We made plans to throw them away, but it just didn’t happen. It got to the point that I didn’t want to throw it away. I wanted to take a picture to commemorate the auspicious achievement. Indeed, we even took some pictures; but the stack continued to grow. It took on a life of its own, reaching to the ceiling in not just one row, but another. Soon its powers grew further. It attracted other wayward boxes. Fortunately, our slovenly secret was hidden from the view of guests by a door.
With its height came arrogance. It thought itself capable of overpowering its creators. Alas, that hubris was defeated by nothing more than air.
As I sat in my room, I heard an unusual cacophony, lasting no more than a couple of seconds. Fireworks? Perhaps a bizarre bit of thunder? I go to my door to ask Chad; his look is grave. He had opened the door leading to the garage to see if he had forgotten to turn off the light. When he closed the door, the rush of wind knocked down a portion of the tower.
Realizing the time had come, we knocked down the rest, flooding the bottom of the stairwell with a sea of red boxes. We don’t have an exact count, but the total is somewhere around 50 boxes, which represent 600 delicious cans of Dr Pepper. We then sat on the stairs and folded up all of the boxes. We ended up stuffing the folded boxes into intact boxes, six in all, which are now sitting neatly outside our garage awaiting pick-up tomorrow morning.