A couple times a week, I go for a decaf skim tall latte, no foam, extra hot. And each of those times, I hand the barista my $2.75 along with my “frequent drinker” club card, which she punches a nice coffee mug-shaped hole into the cute little numbered circles on the card.
I tell you – it is a great day in the world of Melissa when I get to #10. I swear, sometimes I feel like I’ve won the lottery when I get my 10th coffee for free. Many times I even do a calorie-splurge and order a Grande (what can I say…it’s free…although about an hour later, I regret it when I can’t even hold my pen straight as my hand is shaking so much from my 16 ounces of decaf espresso – cheap date :). Regardless, it’s a good feeling. It makes me feel that this little coffee hut drive-thru really cares about keeping me as a customer, so much that they will buy me a coffee every few weeks. So, I keep going back….
Which leads me to a great idea. I think that every 20-30-40-something wishing to conceive should be part of a club that gets our own punch card (Sorry I left the “teens” out of my club….but go away, you are too young to be a parent…but that’s a whole other post that I’ll rant about later)!!
Ok, back to my theory.
Imagine this:
Every of-age woman should be given a punch card to use for…….PREGNANCY TESTS!
For those of you who have never purchased one – they are expensive little buggers. And if they had a punch card for pregnancy tests, I would be on my 127th free one by now.
Ok, maybe a little exaggerated but I swear I have purchased well over 50+ pregnancy tests throughout my journey (keep in mind that many times they come in packages of 2 or 3 so that helps my numbers).
Imagine the excitement when you walk up to the shy checkout guy at the CVS counter and he notices you are up for your free pregnancy test on your punch card. I would probably do a little fist pump.
One time, I was at CVS, picking up a few items for the weekend – you know, my typical drug store items: 2 bottles of wine, a bottle of hairspray, Gabriel’s favorite deodorant (the one with the sailboats on it) and 2 boxes of pregnancy tests. I had purchased these items many times in the past, although maybe not together all at once. Either way, I didn’t think much about it as I walked up to the checkout counter.
Well, the look the cashier gave me was fantastic – I could just read her mind as looked at my items – “poor girl, she is either going to have an awful night and drink both these bottles of wine or get a positive on the tests and then this wine will go to waste”.
I remember the first few times I bought tests. I would hide the tests under other items in my cart and sheepishly put them on the checkout counter LAST, hoping that the cashier would quickly swipe the items over the scanner (and not leave them on the counter for too long where people might see) and promptly place them into the bag.
Oh how times have changed!
My husband is a graphic designer, so I’m sure I could get him to design the “trying-to-conceive” punch cards. I’m thinking the cute little circles would represent the egg and the hole punch would be the shape of small sperm, you know, like the ones in the opening credits of “Look Who’s Talking”, swimming along while Bruce Willis encourages the other little swimmers to race towards the egg, all while The Beach Boys “I Get Around” plays joyfully in the background.
Do you think Office Max has hole punches in the shape of sperm???