Vending machines were sexy.
The other day I was telling my friend Tad that, as a child, I’d loved hospitals because of the games and magazines in the waiting rooms and because of the vending machines. Tad pointed out how funny it was that vending machines fascinate children in general. Along with candy and department store catalogs, they were a child’s equivalent to sex and liquor, basically.
We bonded over the fact that we both used to love the lunch food ones – the ones with tall rotating columns of sandwiches, soups, and frozen oddities. Those were the best because you pressed the button to make the columns turn, and then you slid open little plastic doors for each item.
Tad said he’d been in awe of the coffee machines that dispensed not only coffee and hot cocoa, but also chicken broth.
It was time to confess a secret to him, then. I admitted out loud, for the first time ever, that the reason I’ve been wanting to go to Japan for so long is for its vending machines.
