To begin this journey of distributing COVID safe fruit snacks, I started in the admissions office with peers I work with often. I knew that with it nearing lunch time, they were bound to accept. And boy, was I right! Right away, they both excitedly welcomed the small pack of bright yellow gummies. “What kind of person gives away perfectly good minion gummies?” to which I responded with “It’s for a class” and that was the end of the discussions – as if it was perfectly normal for professors to assign fruit snack distribution. 

My next and final stop was the scarcely filled first floor of the library. It was, again, near lunch time so the majority of students could most likely be found in the cafeteria. Yet, there were a few brave souls who braved the cold to come study in the library. For this, I decided to offer an award in the shape of, yep, you guessed it, Minion fruit snacks! I started within the dining area near the Spoonholder. The first girl was a little more hesitant than my co-workers in admissions. I blame it on her possibly wondering why a stranger was offering her fruit snacks as she drank her coffee. Yet, no questions were asked. Another group of girls accepted and cheered as they noticed it was minions.

            “Who doesn’t love minions!”

Then I made my way to the rest of the floor. The only person who rejected was a girl I had in multiple of my extra-curriculars. I decided to pursue the interaction a little further, reasoning with her that they were “free” and “no strings” were attached. She just had to take them. 

            “Plus, they’re minions! Who doesn’t like minions!”

She caved and accepted, and I went on my way.

I found the most interesting part ,other than the fact that no one really asked questions and just took them, to be the influence that the popular animated figures of the gummies, the Minions, played on whether or not people took the gummies. Those who objected at first, whether they weren’t hungry or were a despiser of delicious fruit snacks, would do a double take at the box and then reconsider. 

“Oh minions! Sure I’ll take one!”

Maybe Minions trigger a warm memory, one that could warm them up on these chilly winter days. Or, possibly, their roommate is a huge fan of the Despicable Me series, so big of a fan that their room is fully covered with the little smiling faces. If this was the case, they probably wanted to bring a peace offering or a token of their love in souvenir form. 

I would like to attribute my success of passing out all my fruit snacks to the kind demeanor of my smiling eyes and persuasion tactics of making it seem like their idea – as well as the 2010 movie that popularized Bob, Kevin, and Stuart…