a lesson in disappointment

Yesterday was a day that I had been looking forward to for quite some time. It was the day we were going to visit Paeroa. What's so exciting about that you ask. Well Paeroa is the birthplace of L&P (Lemon & Paeroa). L&P is a soft drink that is world famous in New Zealand and is a mixture of... well a lot of stuff but also lemon juice and mineral water from Paeroa. I wasn't so sure about it the first time I tried it but now I absolutely love the stuff. Just for the record, L&P also has some of the funniest commercials out there.

Anyway, about a month and a half back Brooke and I got the brilliant idea to go visit Paeroa and take pictures of the giant L&P bottle in the town. I also really wanted to get an L&P T-shirt. I haven't been able to find any L&P merchandise online but I read that there was a gift shop at the L&P Cafe. So I figured there must be a T-shirt there. I had imagined the perfect L&P T-shirt in my mind. It would be brown like the bottle and have the L&P logo on the front. This meant that I would be able to back to the States and wear a shirt that says "World famous in New Zealand."

So yesterday, after much anticipation, we drove to the little town of Paeroa. Paeroa itself is a little scary. There are L&P logos on everything. We originally thought there were tons of L&P gift shops because of all the signs with the logo on them. In reality though there is only one place in town to buy L&P merchandise. The other stores, restaurants and shops have the logo up because... well just because. At any rate, we arrived at the L&P gift shop and cafe and took the obligatory picture with the bottle and then I hurried into the gift shop to claim my coveted T-shirt.

To my shock the shirts I found in the gift shop were complete crap. Corny, cheesy and cheaply made. I was very let down. I wandered over to the cafe in hopes of finding something at least a little bit better. I walked around the corner and into the cafe and to my absolute joy, there, before my eyes, was the perfect L&P T-shirt. It wasn't close to what I had imagined, it was exactly what I had imagined. I ran to the rack holding the shirts and embraced it. Okay, maybe I didn't embrace it but I was pretty excited that they had exactly what I wanted.

Then my lesson in disappointment began. As I was caressing the shirt that was soon to be mine Brooke pointed out the price tag. It was $55 freakin dollars!!! What the? Are you kidding me? $55 dollars for a simple cotton T-shirt? I turned to the lady behind the counter and with a look of disbelief asked, "Are these really $55?" She looked a bit shocked at being asked this question so directly and responded, "Oh, we sell heaps of those." I sarcastically said something like, "That's nice" and began walking towards the door. While I was walking away she called out after me and informed me that she wouldn't have paid that much either. I mean really, even if I was rich I don't think I could bring myself to pay that much money for one stinkin T-shirt.

In disgust we drove over to the town information centre to see if there was any other place in town where we might find one of these T-shirts. She looked very disappointed in her town as she told us that unfortunately that was the only place in town which sold L&P gear. We spent the rest of the day hiking and I managed to walk off most of my anger and indignation. On the way back through town I decided to stop back at the gift shop and pick up the $5 key chain. Unfortunately we then found out that the gift shop closed at 3:00. So, yeah, I think I hate Paeroa.