The M&M deal

The story of the M&M deal has mostly been lost to time, but its impacts are still felt by Jared and Audrey today.

As it goes, sometime between the years of late elementary school and early high school, Jared was once eating from a bag of M&Ms during a car ride. Audrey didn’t have any snacks herself, and was desperately hungry for them.

They struck a deal: Jared would give Audrey a handful of M&Ms, and in exchange, she had to do whatever he wanted.

Forever.

On the surface, the deal was, obviously, absolutely ludicrous. Jared knew he had all the power in the situation and no qualms about exploiting it. Audrey reluctantly accepted.

Jared thought he had pulled off the negotiation of a lifetime, except… Audrey must’ve been playing 4D chess the entire time, because as soon as she finished her M&Ms, she completely put the stakes of the deal out of her mind. She did not do anything Jared wanted, and in fact, never had any intention of doing so. She just sat there, smug.

Jared knew that under normal circumstances, Memo wouldn’t approve of either of them reneging on a clearly-established deal. But he hadn’t anticipated the fallout of arguing this particular case. There was nothing Memo could do; it was impossible to hold Audrey to an agreement of doing “whatever he wanted,” and because Jared hadn’t even given an impression of what that something would’ve been, she couldn’t even make Audrey comply with “some” of the deal. The case was effectively thrown out.

Ironically, if Jared had instead asked for one particular favor, he could’ve forced Audrey to follow through on it even if she tried to back out. But his demanding anything, as miraculous as it seemed to him at the time, proved to be akin to demanding nothing at all.

For many years afterward, Jared and Audrey would continue to try and make different deals with each other. Audrey often proposed terms that seemed too good to be true, and Jared would often remind her that she still owed him whatever he wanted from the M&M deal. She would gloss it over, saying that that was all in the past. Jared would fall for it and agree to the deal as Audrey continued flouting it, doing whatever she wanted.

Interestingly, Jared can’t really remember the last time Audrey ever actually held up her end of one of their deals.   ❐

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