Welcome to Texas, enjoy your sales tax
There was a family with a mother and two kids, one being a teenage boy and the other a preteen girl. They were on vacation from up north and arriving at a desert hotel in Texas; the place was set up like a bunch of disconnected buildings over a wide area. It was still afternoon, very hot and sunny.
The hotel office was the first building as the mother pulled the car past it, but there was no obvious parking lot right there. She said she'd find it and went to the left along the road, there were more buildings and stuff to the right. They passed a pool, and the son mentioned it though he also said perhaps the water wasn't so promising after all, as from the angle he was looking at it, it looked like it might have been a murky green. It was hard to tell, though, and there was another bigger pool after that with even less-promising water.
The further they went, the more obvious it was they were getting too far away, and the son mentioned this but the mother refused to go back, still convinced the parking lot was out here somewhere. He said it was too far to walk back, and then as they seemed to leave the complex entirely and approach a large warehouse and other buildings, he said, "Look, we're in a whole other township now!"
The mother pulled over and the son got out, tired of dealing with the stupidity. He knew where the hotel office was, even if it was quite a walk back. There was a place to get drinks and he went inside, asking the guy behind the counter how much a Cherry Coke was. On the answer, the teenager put a coin on the counter and said, "I'll take 20, then."
The coin had the denomination "10000" on one side, along with the word "Canada", and on the other side it had the word "GOLD". The guy behind the bar stayed where he was, leaning up against another counter along the back wall; he could see the coin from there.
Some older guy chuckled at the kid and said, "That's worth about two bucks, son."
It still wasn't gonna fly even for a soda, so the kid finally dug a quarter out of his pocket, which was apparently the price of the drink. Still the guy behind the bar didn't move, and the teen asked why that wasn't enough.
"Sales tax."
"Geez, you guys charge sales tax on food here?" Digging around in his pocket again, he pulled out a penny and added it, and he really didn't have any more so he was about to ask how much sales tax could possibly be on a quarter.
A woman came up, she was probably late 20's at least and pretty, with short blonde hair and wearing jeans and a denim leather jacket over a t-shirt of some sort. She added random coins to the little pile and told the guy behind the counter to keep the change. The kid couldn't believe someone so pretty was helping him out, and then it seemed she wanted to actually sit by him at the counter and talk to him.
Now there seemed to be some kind of plot developing, to do with the woman needing to get some information out of the kid. Meanwhile about all he was thinking was that if this kept up and she stuck around even when he would have to walk back to the hotel eventually, he was suddenly glad it was a very long walk back. In the meantime, the soda came in bottles as she had also ordered a regular Coke for herself, and it seemed to keep nicely cold even when they refilled the glasses later.
I had the visuals of the glasses being refilled, but made a comment to someone nearby as if I were watching a movie. I said I could really go for a rootbeer float, regular flavor (the concept of Cherry Coke versus regular Coke was confusing things). I don't know who it was I was talking to, I was still paying attention to the... movie?
Then I woke up.
The hotel office was the first building as the mother pulled the car past it, but there was no obvious parking lot right there. She said she'd find it and went to the left along the road, there were more buildings and stuff to the right. They passed a pool, and the son mentioned it though he also said perhaps the water wasn't so promising after all, as from the angle he was looking at it, it looked like it might have been a murky green. It was hard to tell, though, and there was another bigger pool after that with even less-promising water.
The further they went, the more obvious it was they were getting too far away, and the son mentioned this but the mother refused to go back, still convinced the parking lot was out here somewhere. He said it was too far to walk back, and then as they seemed to leave the complex entirely and approach a large warehouse and other buildings, he said, "Look, we're in a whole other township now!"
The mother pulled over and the son got out, tired of dealing with the stupidity. He knew where the hotel office was, even if it was quite a walk back. There was a place to get drinks and he went inside, asking the guy behind the counter how much a Cherry Coke was. On the answer, the teenager put a coin on the counter and said, "I'll take 20, then."
The coin had the denomination "10000" on one side, along with the word "Canada", and on the other side it had the word "GOLD". The guy behind the bar stayed where he was, leaning up against another counter along the back wall; he could see the coin from there.
Some older guy chuckled at the kid and said, "That's worth about two bucks, son."
It still wasn't gonna fly even for a soda, so the kid finally dug a quarter out of his pocket, which was apparently the price of the drink. Still the guy behind the bar didn't move, and the teen asked why that wasn't enough.
"Sales tax."
"Geez, you guys charge sales tax on food here?" Digging around in his pocket again, he pulled out a penny and added it, and he really didn't have any more so he was about to ask how much sales tax could possibly be on a quarter.
A woman came up, she was probably late 20's at least and pretty, with short blonde hair and wearing jeans and a denim leather jacket over a t-shirt of some sort. She added random coins to the little pile and told the guy behind the counter to keep the change. The kid couldn't believe someone so pretty was helping him out, and then it seemed she wanted to actually sit by him at the counter and talk to him.
Now there seemed to be some kind of plot developing, to do with the woman needing to get some information out of the kid. Meanwhile about all he was thinking was that if this kept up and she stuck around even when he would have to walk back to the hotel eventually, he was suddenly glad it was a very long walk back. In the meantime, the soda came in bottles as she had also ordered a regular Coke for herself, and it seemed to keep nicely cold even when they refilled the glasses later.
I had the visuals of the glasses being refilled, but made a comment to someone nearby as if I were watching a movie. I said I could really go for a rootbeer float, regular flavor (the concept of Cherry Coke versus regular Coke was confusing things). I don't know who it was I was talking to, I was still paying attention to the... movie?
Then I woke up.