Tricky plastic bottle yields lesson in using spare time

At the Burger King at McCarran International Airport C Gates, 16 ounces of bottled water costs $3 and 22 cents. Yep, I broke a twenty to pay for it.

I'm drinking it right now. Sitting on the floor, waiting to board my flight, my aptly named laptop in my -- you guessed it! -- lap. And I'm enjoying my Nestle Pure Life purified water "enhanced with minerals for taste."

Funny that they would go to the trouble to purify it only to contaminate it again with minerals. I'll bet they don't even know where those minerals have been.

I'm hugely committed to enjoying this water, in hopes of counterbalancing how stupid I feel for paying $3.22 for it. I wasn't even that thirsty. Just trying to avoid soda, which may well be cheaper and have less mineral contamination.

I open the bottle so the water can "breathe." I let my nose linger over the opening. Colorado River, with hints of movie theater drinking fountain, lawn sprinklers and the slightest suggestion of Straits of Magellan.

I put the bottle to my mouth and take a gentle pull, letting the Pure Life? linger over my tongue and palate, before allowing it to tumble down my throat and into the darkness.

Tastes like water.

Then the yellow highlight on the back of the label catches my eye. Turns out that Nestle Pure Life purified water (enhanced with minerals for taste) "is proud to bring (me) a bottle that is better for the environment, because it is made with up to 30 percent less plastic.*" I follow the asterisk down and read, in a font slightly smaller than smallpox virus, "versus comparable size, leading beverage brands."

I'm speechless. But, for a moment, it does get my mind off the $3.22 I just coughed up for this water.

Up to 30 percent less plastic. Which, I guess, could mean the bottle I'm holding might also be made of 1 percent less plastic than comparable size, leading beverage brands, assuming we could agree that 1 percent is included in the formula "up to 30 percent."

Now, normally I don't spend a lot of time contemplating and comparing the relative amounts of plastic going into making beverage bottles. But these folks at Pure Life have really got me wondering. So, I squeeze the bottle a few times, making that crunchy plastic noise, and try to recall if I'm feeling more or less resistance than when I have squeezed other bottles. The experiment yields only water spilled on the crotch of my jeans.

Which is when I see the other label, also in yellow highlight: "drink pure life. collect labels." And beneath that, "goplaylabels.com."

So I begin to pick and pry at the label, which then makes an even louder crunchy plastic noise that, if I'm any judge of body language and facial expression, is annoying several of my fellow soon-to-be passengers. Not my fault. The good folks at Nestle Pure Life have me all pumped about collecting labels.

The label pops off, and I turn it over to behold ... nothing. Not a damn thing. So I log on, right there at the airport, to goplaylabels.com.

Step One says my school should have been registered by Jan. 30, not quite three months ago. Step Two says I should drink Nestle Pure Life purified water and collect the labels. Step Three says the deadline for sending in the labels has expired.

Just my luck. Here I sit with my first ever Nestle Pure Life label. I'm out $3.22, and I've lost the respect of a fair handful of my fellow passengers. But I didn't register my school. And, even if I had, the deadline has passed. That lady at Burger King plied me with a bottle of Nestle Pure Life purified water on the promise of an expired promotion. Which means this hard-won label is worthless.

One of my favorite George Carlin quotes floats through my head: "If you nail any two things together that have never been nailed together before, some schmuck will buy it."

Mr. Carlin neglected to add that, if you contain people in a small space and make them wait, doing nothing, for more than an hour, they will pay any amount of money for food and drink and count themselves fortunate. They will even get very intentional and enthusiastic about peeling labels off plastic bottles.

It's astonishing, really, how easily I can normalize and be just fine with being a schmuck.

Originally published in View News, May 12, 2009