Priceless.

When I was in college I was slightly obsessed with the concept of the Mastercard “Priceless” commercials. I think it started when I had to write a paper, comparing advertising and marketing campaigns of leading credit card companies. Afterwards I simply had to come up with a few priceless stories myself. I wrote my favourite after we moved out of the dorms into our first NY apartment.

Marie had organized a man with a van to help us move. Waiting in front of the dorm we saw a very ancient truck in zebra print turning into our street. The conversation after we saw it went kind of like this - Me:  Haha, look that is our van! Haha. - Marie: Haha. Ja, right. - Van driver, stopping and getting out in front of us: So, who is Marie? - Me: Oh, no. - Marie (with a very small voice): Me.

We overcame our initial embarrassment of being fetched by such an uncool van in front of the entire school quite quickly though. Zebra man turned out to be great! We even had him fetch us from IKEA. Sitting in the loading area wecould spot his distinguished stripes from miles away on the highway - hurray, our van was here!

After the move was completed and all the furniture built I came up with the following:

Zebra van rental for the move: $300

IKEA glass table for the new kitchen: $160

Take-out dinner for three: $65

Not having to sneak the empty Corona bottles out the next morning*: Priceless

*We lived in a dorm with a strict no alcohol, no drugs rule. For some reason we battled more with secretly getting the empty bottles out than the full ones in.