The Battle Creek, Michigan, headquarters of Kellogg’s looks like a spaceship built to look like a pyramid that was then hastily converted into a public library during a period of intergalactic peace. It looks exactly as you would hope it would look. As fun as it is to try to describe, I still recommend you look it up. It’s really something, and it will help you imagine how it felt to be a pair of eleven-year-old boys walking up to it, secretly carrying a secret code worth one hundred thousand dollars in a backpack.
We walked through the glass doors as if we had a business meeting ourselves, as men and women streamed in and out of the building around us, none of them questioning our right to be there. When we finally reached the all-glass reception desk inside, I realized I didn’t know what to say.
Tom did.
“Prize Department, please,” said Tom.
“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.