Destined For My Costco Rewards

Cotsco is a magical place where you can buy a jug of mayonnaise that can last you a decade. It’s as marvelous place where you can save a lot of money, but you have to pay a fee to join. Their club is exclusive! They don’t let in just anybody, no sir! Only the coolest of the cool and the smartest of the smart get to enter and you have to show you’re a card carrying member or they don’t let you in. Then once you’re inside, you get to set out with the quest of eating enough free samples to cover your membership fee. At least that’s what I do, because I’m a member of the elite Costco club.

Not only are my wife and I members, but we’re members of the club in a way that they give us a certain percentage of our money back! That’s right, they love us so much that they send us a check at the end of the year. And since we have two kids still in diapers who poop more than they eat, we’re earning our money back just in Kirkland brand disposable diapers.

“Did you remember to bring that check this time?” I asked Jammie.

That’s the hard part about getting the check- remembering to actually bring it with us. Even if we stick it in Jammie’s purse, we forget to bring her purse or we leave it in the car.

“Sure did!” Jammie says excitedly.

After all, what’s the point in being a member of their elite club if you never remember your check? It’s like a Boy Scout forgetting his pocket knife, or like a Freemason forgetting his… I don’t know- I’ve never been allowed in their lodge. Still, it’s like forgetting something important.

We did our shopping and we checked out through the line. We got some diapers and some baby formula for the little people. We got some salmon patties and cashews for us big people. And we got some dog food for the four legged ones.

“Shoot!” I said, stopping in my tracks just outside the Costco doors. “We went through all that trouble of remembering to bring the check and I forgot to even use it!”

“It’ll still be good next time,” Jammie says. “We’ll remember then.”

Every time we came to Costco we got a little bit closer to actually using our reward check. The problem with getting closer and closer is that if you never go the entire distance, you never quite make it there. That was us. We kept getting halfway closer but never successfully getting it into the cashier’s hand.

Then we see a man in the distance chasing something through the parking lot. Once we round the corner we see he’s chasing a check just like the one we intended to use inside the store. That’s right, the same type of check we had forgotten to use. We could recognize the Costco check stationary used as it flopped and twisted in the wind on the blacktop. Apparently it wasn’t just us that had problems with the check. Maybe the Voodoo doctors of Costco curse the checks before they go out. They put a spell on the piece of paper to make it nearly impossible to use. You touch the check and you automatically lose focus, leaving it on the desk at home or in the car. For this man, it only seemed right to assume he stepped out of his car and the wind blew it right out of his hand.

“I’ll go help him,” I say to Jammie, letting her take control of our shopping cart while I run through the parking lot.

I felt like Rocky Balboa when he was chasing that chicken. It took speed, strength, and agility to catch up with that check. Well, not strength so much, but I felt powerful once my foot successfully stomped on that fleeting piece of paper.

“This yours?” I said, pointing down at the check under my foot.

“No,” he answers. “I just saw it blowing through the parking lot and thought I’d catch it to return it to the store managers.”

I looked down at the check to see he was right. It wasn’t his. I knew that for a fact because I recognized the name on the check. I recognized the name because it was my own name. That naughty check tried to escape its fate of being exchanged for Pampers. Funny that the check didn’t try to make a break for it until we came near because it was caught only about 200 feet from our car. We were in the store for an hour, so it should have been 100 miles away by then. Guess we’re just destined to cash that check… eventually. True Story.