The temptation, up until now, to perform Snapple bottle acrobatics has been hard to resist. As great risk can bring great reward, so can it bring great disaster as well. Usually I fight the urge to get up and walk the huge distance to the cafe to get a Snapple. So when I do get the bottle, it’s after a lot of internal debate, and physical activity. Then, on the way back to my desk, I simply cannot help but flip the Snapple bottle. I toss the bottle, and perform slow, graceful flips. Or I do a tight double flip. I marvel at my talents of flipping the Snapple bottle, and revel in how perfect a flipping implement it is. The latest trick has been to flip the bottle without losing contact with the bottle. Let it glide around my fingers on it’s axis. Stun people as I take great risk of breaking my precious bottle of nectar to perform unnecessary stunts. I imagine that they say to themselves "Check that out. Look how casual he is. He’s flipping

his bottle of Snapple like it’s a stick of useless wood. He’s a rule breaker. He has guts."

Until the bottle smashes to the floor in front of the T1 training room, in the busiest hall on campus, where hundreds, or even thousands of my coworkers walk every day. Glass everywhere, me groveling, expending futile effort, picking up infinite shards of glass in a puddle of Raspberry Iced Tea. Men in tool belts discover it within seconds, and scramble to get orange cones. They’re not happy, and as much as they’d like me to clean it up as punishment, they insist I don’t touch it. Probably some contractual thing.

And now I sit, without the Snapple that I labored for. After the internal debates, the walking, the freewheeling flipping spirit, I’m short $1.10 and my dignity. I can never flip a Snapple bottle again.