A Cracker Jack® prize for Steve

Do you like surprises? Sure you do, we all do.
Giving them, receiving them, or both?

Remember Cracker Jack®? Can’t remember the last time I had some, and as I write this my craving for that sweet molasses smothered popcorn is intensifying, for it’s my second posting about it (as you’ll soon see).

When we were kids, my dad would come home with those oh-so-recognizable Cracker Jack® boxes for my brothers, sister and me, and then smile with an almost wicked delight as we scrambled to pick a box. He’d laugh at all the deliberation and wrangling we went through to finally settle on the box we claimed as our own, sometimes trading between the five of us, and sometimes protectively holding the first one we pounced on, refusing to let go. It was one of the few confections we didn’t tear into right away, even knowing that there was a surprise inside. In fact, I think that was why we didn’t.

Partly it was that delayed gratification factor, for both the treat and the prize — my dad didn’t bring it home that often; with a big family we all knew it was a good-paycheck kind of thing, especially because no decent human being would expect any kid to share a box with a sibling when there was only one prize inside it. Part of it was the almost endless second guessing about if we’d picked the right box or not, and should be reconsidering the trades, for with five of us there surely would not be duplicate prizes. Trading after the prize was revealed just wouldn’t happen; that was for sure.

We did go through two rounds of trades; “Wanna trade?” when we first opened the box to eat the popcorn – and you had to eat it to get to the prize; dumping it out to get the prize and then putting the popcorn back in the box to eat later was the BIGGEST no-no of them all; you were a baby if you did that – and “Wanna trade now?”  when we all had reached the package with the prize sealed inside.

As unruly a bunch as we could be, no one opened the prize packet until everyone had the treasure in their hands and all the popcorn was eaten (or my dad would never buy such wasteful kids another box ever again); it was this no-need-to-say-it kind of rule between us.

My goodness it has been a long time since I’ve thought about this! Had we understood values, principles, decision-making and such then, we would have known that some of our character and the way we now think may have been defined during those times we sat in a circle on the front lawn under the starfruit tree making our trades. As the shady spot next to the garage, that was the farthest we made it when dad came home with them and called us outside – he couldn’t wait to give those boxes to us either.

I was the oldest, and many were the times I’d trade with the two youngest ones just because my brothers wouldn’t and I didn’t want them to cry. At first I was pretty selfish and thrilled in the game-playing too, but eventually, keeping all eyes dry and moods decent come dinner time became much more important to me than whatever the plastic toy in that package … without explicitly saying so, my parents made it clear who was expected to be the oldest in both age and behavior while sitting under that tree.

I remember that I kept those plastic toys in one of those purple velvet bags that Crown Royal whiskey comes in; my grandpa had given it to me. Most of the time the bag was stashed in my underwear drawer (yes, clever…) and I’d only take it out when I got a fresh box of Cracker Jack® and a new prize to keep, or when I’d have to babysit and needed cheap bribes. All five of us had our own collections stashed somewhere, but they were never part of the “virgin trades,” another unwritten rule.

Who’d have thought we’d learn so much from a Cracker Jack® box.

All these memories came flooding back to me because of a certain idea. I started to give, but so far, I feel like I've been receiving mostly! How would you like to help me give a Cracker Jack® Prize to someone who is an exceptional example of who a Mea Ho‘okipa (exceptional host) truly is?

The “starfruit tree” we’re all sitting under is over at Passion for the Good Customer Experience. Come play: That Cracker Jack® Prize

Mmmmm, yummy. You know you want some!