One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories(34)

“I’m sorry, how can I help you two?” said the reassuringly plain-looking woman at the desk, a woman with brown hair and plastic glasses who looked like she could have been one of our friendlier teachers.

“Prize Department—Sweepstakes Prize Subdivision,” said Tom with even more authority. “Also check under Giveaways—Secret Code Redemption.”

“Do you have a name, or a person you’re looking for?” she asked. I took the winning code out of my backpack and—holding it tight with two hands, not trusting even this palpably kind woman, our one friend here so far—held it for her to see, but not touch.

“Oh my. Congratulations! How exciting. Are you two brothers?”

“No way,” said Tom. “Prize Department, please.”

“It’s my ticket,” I said.

“What’s your name?” the woman asked. I gave her a copy of my school ID.

She paused as she read the name and looked at me again.

“Let me just copy this, and you wait here.”


We sat on the stiff leather couch for five minutes until an extremely tall, extremely confident, very handsome and athletic-looking man in a notably soft-looking suit walked up to us and smiled. “Congratulations. Which of you is the winner?” he asked, but he was staring at me the whole time.

“I am,” I said.

“Congratulations,” he said again, extending a hand. I stood up so I could shake his hand appropriately, and he shook it so hard it hurt. “Come to my office and let’s discuss this.”

Tom stood up, too.

“Just the contest winner,” said the man.

Tom kept standing. “It’s a trap,” he blurted, his voice breaking, exactly as our books on puberty had warned us might happen but had never happened so far. “It’s a trap!”

“It’s not a trap,” said the man.

“What department are you in?” asked Tom. “Can we see some ID?”

“I’m Executive Vice-Chairman of the Kellogg’s corporation,” said the man in the suit, “and I don’t need to show ID here.”

Tom sat down.

The man gestured toward the long hallway ahead of us—after you, the gesture said—and even though I didn’t know where we were going, he let me lead the way, until we got to the elevator and he pressed the top button, and he took it from there.


The office was huge, and quiet. Windows looked out over all of Michigan, to Grand Rapids and beyond; there were so many windows, or more accurately so much window, that the room was very bright even with none of the lights on. Little toys were neatly lined up across his long windowsill—a tiny basketball, a tiny pistol, a tiny lemon—each of them sitting on top of a bronze label on a plaque. On the walls were about a half dozen framed, colorful drawings, each signed by many children, thanking him for their “super” and “great” and “super great” experiences on field trips.

“You have an unusual last name,” the man said, and then said all five syllables of it correctly.

I said yes, I had never met anyone else with it, and it seemed that no one could ever spell or pronounce it. I was impressed he had gotten it right.

He asked more easy and straightforward questions: who my parents were and what they did, what town I was from, whether I had brothers or sisters. It was a great relief, in the midst of such an intimidating situation and environment, to be asked questions I could answer without even trying to think. I kept talking, letting each answer of mine go longer than the last, which led him to even more questions. How’s school? Public, private? Easy, hard? Sports? Baseball, soccer? Tigers, Red Wings? Video games? Friends, best friends, bullies, girls? What do you want to be when you grow up? How do you get along with your parents? Do they often buy Kellogg’s products?

Before long everything tumbled out: how my parents had strict policies against both sugar cereals and name-brand cereals, even the healthy ones; how I had felt drawn to the box in the store anyway; how I had, to my embarrassment now, cried when I lost, which I knew I was too old to do; that very weird follow-up contest that my father had set up for me with the dictionary and the expression he made that I didn’t know how to describe; how I had gone back to the store by myself after school; the bizarre and nonsensical things my parents had said about why it was somehow against our values to redeem the prize; how strange it had felt to be sure for the first time that my parents were wrong, and how frustrated and confused and angry it had made me; the staircase, Tom, 80-20, how the taxi driver didn’t want to let me sit in the front seat for some reason.

After I said everything, he stared at me for a second and paused.

“I can’t give you the prize.”

My mind first went to Tom, warning me that this was a trap.

“Regulations prohibit families of Kellogg’s employees from participating in this contest or claiming a prize,” he said. Then he smiled, and there was—the only time I’ve ever seen this in real life, and a phrase I had never been able to quite understand until now—a glint in this person’s eyes.

“And I’m your father.”


“I’m going to tell you a story. And then you tell me what you want to do.

“Twelve years ago, I was a visiting lecturer at the Steven M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I was twenty-nine years old at the time. I was the youngest Senior Vice President in the history of Kellogg’s. I had called up the school myself and offered my services as a visiting lecturer for one semester. I explained how it was important to give something back to the community, be a role model, to whom much is given much is expected, all that. But that wasn’t it at all. By the way, if I never see you again, and end up teaching nothing else to you—that’s the one thing I want you to have learned from me. People—even good, impressive people—always want something simple and unimpressive. Everything good and impressive that they do in their lives is a result of the impressive path they take to get what they want—not a result of wanting an impressive thing. It’s what brought me here. It’s what brought you here.