out with one punch

On Saturday, I went with Chaco to the used sporting goods stuff store. He wanted some football cleats. NO, he doesn't play for school or any other league. A bunch of neighbor kids just play at a nearby field, so he's gotta have actual football cleats, right?

Now, I grew up in a neighborhood full of boys and no other girls, so I played my share of pick-up sports. It was either that or play with my dollhouse all by myself, which I did do with relish when I needed some "me" time. And yes, I played some football and some football related stuff like "smear the alternative lifestyle guy" and such.

But I don't recall anyone playing in football cleats. We just wore whatever pair of sneakers we owned at the time. But with these kids here, they like to have the proper gear, even for just pick-up. They've got cleats and pants and receiver gloves... gosh, it's a wonder we all survived our childhoods without these things! Chaco gave me the argument that I'd bought him stuff for playing neighborhood roller hockey and that this was the same thing. Uhm... not really, but I figured since the football games were good clean active fun, we'd go see what the store had.

And we did find him a pair at a good price, so I agreed to get them along with a pair of must-have football pants. All up and in, I was looking at about $50. It so happens that I have a frequent player card, or whatever it's called, for this particular store. Every time I make a purchase of more than $20, my card gets punched. After 5 punches, I get a $10 store credit.

So... if I purchase over $40, shouldn't I get 2 punches? But I only got one punch. I thought of bringing it up to the clerk, but I just let it slide. I never even requested the card, they just gave it to me on a previous visit.

The card says I receive a punch for "purchases over $20". Technically, this was one purchase. Couldn't I buy one thing and then walk around and come back up to buy the next thing? Except that wouldn't work either. The pants were under $20. The cleats were over $20. Could I buy the pants and one cleat? Then come back and buy the second cleat?

Except if we split the cost of the cleats down the middle, the cost of one cleat is less than $20. What if I remove the lace of one cleat and throw it in with the second cleat? Now, that's just stupid.

Obviously, the clerk had thought this all through during the split second amount of time it took him to punch my card only once. He just did it so fast, I didn't notice.

I'm glad we had this chat.
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