DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Back when I was an Ander-clone, one of the few diversions of the day was a contest we called the “Coke Game.” The manager who introduced it timed it strategically to interrupt the food comas that set in around 2:00PM. (In those days, I’d frequently cope with my job dissatisfaction by stuffing down a Grilled Sourdough Bacon Cheeseburger and XL fries for lunch. The mere recollection of that meal makes me wish for a hot flax enema.)

The Coke Game required three players. We usually had five; with more, it becomes too expensive, for reasons that shall become apparent. One player starts the game by privately selecting a number between one and 1000 and recording it on a scrap of paper. The rest of the players take turns guessing. With each guess, the person who selected the number says “higher” or “lower;” subsequent guesses have to be higher or lower, respectively. The game ends when someone picks the written number. That person, the loser, has to buy sodas for everyone. The goal of the game, then, is not to guess the written number, but to guess the number one higher or lower, so that the next player is forced to say the number and buy the drinks.

For the first few weeks, I lost as often as you’d expect — maybe once a week. Then the planets went out of line, or something, and I started losing big, days in a row. It gets demoralizing quickly, having to buy sodas for the team over and over again. I didn’t even like soda. I’d played just for the camaraderie, although that faded too when I realized I was getting milked for Coke (in a manner of speaking).

So I stopped participating and felt immediate relief. Over the cube wall I’d hear the guessing and again feel relief when the loser turned out to be someone other than me, as irrational as that was considering I wasn’t even playing.

Eventually someone goaded me into playing again. I’d had a week or two off, and I reasoned that even if I did lose, it would have been acceptable, the only loss that week. So someone picked a number and wrote it down. I was the first to guess. “Ahh, 874,” I said, picking the most obscure number I could think of.

“I’d like a Mountain Dew,” the guy said, holding up a slip of paper with “874'' inexplicably written on it. I resolved to never never ever play the Coke Game again.

A few weeks later, the same guy who’d goaded me before leaned over the cube wall. “Siege?” he asked, pronouncing the initials of the game in the way we used to do. “No, thanks,” I said. Never never ever. “Oh, come on, it’s been weeks!” he said, goading goading goading, and then “I’ll tell you what — if you lose, I’ll pay for it.”

I considered that. On the one hand, if I lost again, it would prove that I was doomed to fare badly in games of chance for pretty much the rest of my life. On the other hand, if I lost, this irritating guy who I sort of disliked anyway would have to buy sodas for everybody. Tempting… but no. I didn’t bite.

“Oh, c’mon,” he urged, “what have you got to lose?” He didn’t understand is that losing cost much more than the round of $0.75 sodas. I admit now, with the perspective of many years’ distance, that I was overreacting, but my emotional burdens were heavier then, e.g. I had a lot more years’ worth of pointless jobs ahead of me. So I joined the game after all. Someone wrote down a number, and let me guess first. I had 999 chances not to pick the wrong number, so I thought about it for a few seconds, finally selecting the most obscure number I could imagine that didn’t happen to be 874. “319,” I said.

The person with the number didn’t say anything. He just held up a scrap of paper that said “319” on it.