The vending machine

The vending machine doesn't have any popcorn. So when someone took a handy blue marker and scrawled across the machine's plastic window front in small block letters, we want popcorn, it didn't surprise me too much. Someone liked popcorn, and wanted the vending machine stocker to know that.

But after a few weeks of steady replenishments of every other staple in the machine—chips, candy bars, "healthy" bars that are probably just as bad as candy bars, and even gum—the request for popcorn went unheeded. Now I'm not even sure how you would get popcorn into a vending machine in the first place but whether it was possible seemed unimportant. Someone was clearly dying for popcorn.

I'm not sure if it was the lack of popcorn or the plea scribbled across the clear plastic, but that's when the machine started eating change. Countless souls have lost presidentially adorned precious metals into the slotted maw of the machine—I witnessed more than a few, all of whom seemed either angry or explanatory. Either way, I always knew the occasions when someone lost some cash into the machine, because they told anyone else in the kitchenette that it just happened.

That's when the first warning arrived.

No change!

was left scrawled across an envelope and taped onto the coin collector. The thing about the envelope is that it was one of many small paper envelopes left in a plastic tray affixed to the machine—these were envelopes you could use to notify the vending machine repair man that you lost change in the throat of the black plastic beast. Clearly someone thought that this particular envelope would be better used as a warning than as a means of redemption.

Machine doesn't return change

was soon added on another envelope, taped across the coin return button.

Also, this machine does not accept quarters

on the third enveloped seemed a little unnnecessary at this point. Clearly the machine had issues and even if you had the courage to face it and had the fortitude of correct change, it certainly seems that you could find out on your own that the machine didn't accept quarters thank you very much.

And that's when the last shred of sanity fell through the coin acceptor.

Also, this machine eats babies!

was tucked right behind the most recent envelope, and was soon followed by the patriotic sentiment in,

Wrong on change! Wrong for America!

shortly followed by,

Right for Freedomland!

At this point the original popcorn activist seemed to get a little riled, as they added a big cartoon thought bubble sticker to the front of the machine and printed in big block letters,

We NEED popcorn!

which did little to quiet the peanut gallery (of which many were available in the machine).

Don't believe the lies! Popcorn is sin!

At which point, nearly everyone could feel the momentum and rising stakes between all who had left their mark scribbled across the front of the hulking snacktime dispensary. The growing crescendo of pleas, taunts, and protests formed a wave of small envelopes and blue marker, ready to crash down onto all who used the kitchenette, pulling anyone with a mid-afternoon hunger into the absurd undertow of printed characters and armchair idealism. The machine that had only beckoned for quarters and a two-digit selection (don't accidentally hit the number for gum!) now screamed for someone—anyone—to pull the cap off the little blue pen and dip their hand into the tray of unused envelopes, only to find

that the tray was empty. And as the would-be activist hesitantly detached their eyes from the suburban graffiti littering the front of the machine, they would find a lone yellow sticky note on the front of the plastic envelope tray that read simply,

Need more envelopes.