Birthday Snack Box Gift Ideas

Something weird happened last week at the office. Gary came in one morning waving this piece of paper in his hand. He was yelling, “90% off!” but when I asked him what was discounted he frowned. “I…don’t really know.” He showed me this coupon and my confusion only grew. Herein lies the full text: “90% off on all impassioned proclivities semi-congruous with the unmitigated procedural nihilism of birthday superstring analysis. Reach our team at: Website.web, (555) 987-4321, or come see us at 173 Greenway Drive.” The coupon itself was unlike any coupon I had ever seen. It was camouflage and mud splattered. It was shaped like a heart but not the cartoon form like the shape of an actual heart. There was a scratch and sniff at the top of it, the smell sharing a striking resemblance to that of a funeral parlor. At the bottom was a finger puppet which served absolutely no purpose. The dots were adding up and absolutely none of them were connecting. I looked at Gary and he was all smiles. “The word birthday is in there!” he said. “My wife’s birthday is this week, maybe they have some birthday delivery ideas for her.” When Gary saw my indifference (Gary’s wife was pleasant but she made me a fish casserole once that put me out of commission for weeks), he mentioned that our boss also had a birthday coming up, and maybe this business had birthday delivery ideas for him. “If there is even a chance of birthday gift box delivery at 90% off, we have to get to the bottom of this,” Gary said. In the moment I had to agree with him. So I cancelled all my meetings and ordered us a few pizzas.

The first idea in solving what this coupon could possibly represent was to try and understand this phrase. So me and Gary went around the office to ask any and all of our multilingual coworkers if these words made any sense. Five languages: Dutch, Italian, Russian, Swahili and Louisiana Cajun. No dice. Not even a semblance of a morsel of a smidgen of a root word to focus our sights on. This is when Gary started to panic, muttering things like, “Unique birthday gifts delivery,” and “Snack box delivery gift.” I gave him a quick smack in the noggin to get his mind off birthday snack box delivery and then we moved on to phase two. Phase two was going downstairs and picking up the pizza of course. I asked the delivery guy about the garlic sticks I ordered, he shrugged and hit his sick vape as if it wasn’t his exact job to have my garlic sticks. His vape was pretty sick though. Then Gary asked him if he knew any good birthday snack box delivery services and I had to pull him back inside. I should have known by this point that Gary was loosening at the hinges.

So we headed back into the office and sat down in front of my computer with pizza in lap. Morale was high, and we really thought we were surely going to get to the bottom of this mystery coupon debacle once we looked up the website. So I searched Website.web, and was transported to an elaborate food gift delivery Philippines service. Apparently website must mean food in filipino, who knew! I clicked on a snack box gift Phillippines could ship and I didn’t recognize a single food item. Fried yo-yo? Edible light bulb? These snacks from Phillippines were only compounding our confusion, and then I realized, we weren’t even on website.web! The company firewall had diverted us to a customized gift box Phillippines website of all places. Gary tried to pick up the computer and slam it but his back gave out. I had never seen someone become so distraught over a coupon, though there were definitely some honorable mentions in the past. Nonetheless, that there should have been the end of it. I could have stopped what was coming then and there. But how could I have possibly expected what would come out of this search?

Against every sensical fiber in my body I picked up my phone and dialed the number on the coupon. Gary on the floor was murmuring about the best food gift baskets. At first I didn’t think anyone would answer. I was about to hang up when a jolting scream came through the phone, then the call died. So I called again, and this time it was a lady’s voice. “Hello?” I asked her about the birthday food gift box deal, then she called me a pervert and hung up on me. I tried the number again, and this time it was a boy on the phone. Nothing made sense, but I stuck to my guns and asked the boy if he knew about any of the best snack gift boxes for birthdays, and if he knew of any discounts on them. No response. I asked him what his name was and he said, “Phillip.” That’s when Gary lunged up from the carpet screaming about Filipinos. I tried to ask the kid one more time about any snack gift box but he must have heard Gary’s breakdown and he too hung up on me. We were getting absolutely nowhere with this.

I had put my phone down and picked Gary up, plopping his wallowing mess of a body in a chair. “Look, Gary, I’m not sure there’s much more we can do here. Maybe this coupon isn’t worth the trouble. I mean, how much can a snack box gift delivery even cost at full price? Probably not much.” Gary grabbed me by the sleeves and said, “It’s not about the snack box gift ideas. It hasn’t been for a while now. It’s about sending a message…a message that you don’t torment other human beings with these ambiguous, nonsensical coupons.” A single tear rolled down his cheek. His cheek trembled with rage, shaking the tear off. “We have to go to the source. You understand?” He jabbed a finger at the address on the coupon. “Let’s see what healthy snack box ideas we can find there.” The look on his face was animalistic. The man who was Gary was cowering somewhere deep in this husk of his former self, terrified to fight against the beast which had taken over. “And if we find nothing?” I asked him. Then Gary just stood up, put his coat on, and walked out the door.

In my car I had put the address into the GPS. It was a four hour drive. The destination said, “Whispering Trail National Park.” I tried once more to petition against this ridiculous waste of time. Then Gary bit me. That was enough of a signal to tell me to shut up and drive. The whole drive all Gary did was look out the window and whisper, “Customizable international snack box,” in a creepy sing-song voice. Once we arrived at the destination he hopped out of the car and sprinted into the woods screaming about a custom snack box gift. It was getting dark and I lost him in the chase. Fear embodied me, pushing me forward and keeping me back. In the bark of a tree was carved, “Customize your own snack box.” Sometime later I found Gary sitting at the shore of a lake next to a small shack. A sign on it read, “Sale on impassioned proclivities semi-congruous with the unmitigated procedural nihilism of superstring analysis,” but nothing about birthdays, and nothing about customizable snacks. Then Gary jumped into the lake. That really pissed me off because I had to go in and save him.

We didn’t see Gary for a while after that. I would send him a healthy snack box gift every week to keep his spirits up until one day he sent me an email saying, “Please don’t send me another healthy snack gift box.” I thought that was fair. He did have a mental breakdown over them, maybe healthy food gifts for him wasn’t the best idea…We never did figure out the origin of that coupon. Maybe it was a curse, maybe it was a test, maybe it was nothing at all. A figment of our imagination during a painfully boring Monday morning at work. But I’ll always remember that camouflaged, anatomically correct heart with the scratch and sniff and finger puppet. Mostly because I still have it…in my wallet…close to my heart. Sometimes I call that number on the nights I can’t sleep, hoping for little Phillip, or that lady who called me a pervert. Then I always hang up and remember it was a mistake to chase the coupon’s trail. But the thing is, Gary came back to work today, and the look is still in his eye. The hunger is still there. God save us.