#861 Stuff Ads

The other day I grabbed a pen from the pile of writing instruments I keep neatly grouped on an ever-changing portion of my kitchen countertop. For the first time I looked at the writing on it. It had the name of a bank. Curious, I decided to go through the pile and see how many pens were from banks.
Quite a few.
Which reminds me. I heard this commercial from a dentist. He said he could do all kinds of extensive dentistry “in as few as one visit.”
Can there be as few as one? Doesn’t the word always mean more the one? I usually use it to mean three or more. Quite a few means many. You wouldn’t say as many as one visit.
Maybe he should just say he can do many days work in only one visit.
Where was I? Oh yeah, pens and stuff, the advertising involved in using promotional items. Until my epiphany the other day, I never seriously looked at an advertisement on a pen.
I’ve had giveaway pens I like. And frankly I’ve cadged more than one from the institutions that provided them.
But I was their customer already.
I didn’t open up a special account to get a pen. And I can’t say their name recognition in a subliminal sense ever tipped me to make an additional deposit or open an IRA.
The same with that other ubiquitous giveaway item—the key fob. Why do I care whether I have a key fob? What am I going to do with it?
I can use the ring, but my keys themselves are heavy enough already. The last thing I need is another lump of metal in my pocket setting off airport security.
And some of these puppies are pretty chunky. I look at it as I look at extraneous things in my car. Remove those snowchains in your trunk if it’s August. The extra weight is affecting your mileage.
Likewise the pointless poundage in my pocket from prodigious amounts of key fobbage—I don’t want waste the personal energy.
Not even as few as one calorie of it.
America, ya gotta love it.