1 Coke and Pepsi

MISSION UNSTOPPABLE THE GENIUS FILES by DAN GUTMAN

《不可阻挡的任务：天才档案》丹·古特曼著

Chapter 1 Coke and Pepsi There were ten items on Coke McDonald's to- do list on June 17, but JUMP OFF A CLIFF was not one of them. CLEAN OUT MY LOCKER was on the list. PICK UP MY YEARBOOK was on the list. GET BIRTHDAY PRESENT FOR PEP was on the list. PACK FOR SUMMER VACATION was on the list. But nothing about jumping off a cliff. And yet, oddly enough, jumping off a cliff was the one thing that Coke McDonald was actually going To Do on June 17. Not only was he going to jump off a cliff, but first he was going to push his twin sister, Pepsi.

6月17日，可口可乐麦当劳的待办事项清单上有10项，但跳崖不在其中。 “清理我的储物柜”也在清单上。 “捡起我的年鉴”也在名单上。 给PEP买生日礼物在清单上。 暑假行装也在清单上。 但没说要跳悬崖。 然而，奇怪的是，在6月17日，可口可乐麦当劳实际上要做的一件事就是跳下悬崖。 他不仅要从悬崖上跳下去，而且首先要推他的双胞胎妹妹百事可乐。

Now, before we get to the cliff-jumping part of the story, maybe I'd better explain something. Why would anyone in their right mind name their children Coke and Pepsi? It was probably because Dr. Benjamin McDonald and his lovely wife, Bridget, weren't in their right minds when the twins were born almost thirteen years earlier. For one thing, the McDonalds didn't know they would be having twins until after Coke entered the world. The doctors and nurses had pretty much taken off their latex gloves and called it a day when Mrs. McDonald informed them that she felt a funny feeling deep inside—as if she wasn't quite finished. And, lo and behold, she was absolutely right! The doctors and nurses went back to work; and the next thing anybody knew, out popped a bouncing baby girl. Surprise! From the start, the McDonalds had decided to name their son Coke. Not because of the soft drink. Because of coal. According to

现在，在我们开始故事的悬崖跳水部分之前，也许我最好解释一下。 为什么一个头脑正常的人会给自己的孩子取名为可口可乐和百事可乐？ 这可能是因为。 大约13年前，本杰明·麦克唐纳和他可爱的妻子布里奇特出生时，他们的头脑并不正常。 首先，直到可口可乐进入这个世界，麦当劳才知道他们会有双胞胎。 医生和护士们几乎都脱下了他们的乳胶手套，结束了一天的工作，这时麦克唐纳太太告诉他们，她内心深处有一种奇怪的感觉——仿佛她还没有完全结束。 你瞧，她是绝对正确的！医生和护士们都回去工作了；接下来大家都知道，一个蹦蹦跳跳的女婴蹦了出来。 惊喜!从一开始，麦当劳就决定给他们的儿子取名为Coke。 不是因为软饮料。 因为煤。根据

Dictionary.com, coke is "the solid product resulting from the destructive distillation of coal in an oven or closed chamber or by imperfect combustion, consisting principally of carbon." Go ahead and look it up if you don't believe me. I'll wait. Okay, did you look it up? Good. Dr. McDonald, a history professor at San Francisco State University, had written a scholarly book about coal's impact on the Industrial Revolution. He always thought Coke would make a good name for a boy. It's short, sweet. It has that hard K sound. Like Kodak. Katmandu. Kalamazoo. When Coke's twin sister popped out, Dr. and Mrs. McDonald were faced with a dilemma. Once you name your firstborn son Coke, you can't very well name his twin sister Rachel or Emily or anything too normal. It wouldn't sound right. "How about Pepsi?" one of the attending nurses suggested as a joke. "Coke and Pepsi."

在Dictionary.com网站上，焦炭是“煤在炉子或密闭的房间里进行破坏性蒸馏或不完全燃烧而产生的固体产物，主要由碳组成。” 如果你不相信我，可以去查一下。 我将等待。好吧，你查过吗？ 好。麦克唐纳博士是旧金山州立大学（San Francisco State University）的历史学教授，曾写过一本关于煤炭对工业革命影响的学术著作。 他一直认为可乐会给男孩带来好名声。 它很短，很甜蜜。它有一个很重的K音。 就像柯达。加德满都。卡拉马祖。 当可口可乐的孪生姐妹突然出现时。 和麦克唐纳太太面临着进退两难的境地。 一旦你给你的第一个儿子取名为Coke，你就不能给他的双胞胎妹妹取名为Rachel或Emily或任何太正常的名字。 听起来不太对劲。“百事可乐怎么样？”一位主治护士开玩笑说。 “可口可乐和百事可乐。”

Everyone in the birthing room had a good old laugh over that. But the more the McDonalds thought about it, the more they liked the idea. Coke and Pepsi! It was perfect! Not only that, but it fit their sensibilities. The McDonalds were second-generation hippies from San Francisco who had always disapproved of the rampant commercialization of society. Dr. McDonald was fond of telling his students that the average person living in a city sees up to five thousand advertisements every day. Five thousand ads! What better way to stick it to The Man than to name your kids Coke and Pepsi? It would be an ironic statement about how corporations control people's lives. Heck, their last name was already McDonald. Why not name the kids Coke and Pepsi? Naturally, when the local media picked up on the baby names, the Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola companies were not happy at first. They made some noises about suing the family. Giving babies the same names as popular soft drinks

产房里的每个人都为此开怀大笑。 但麦当劳的人越想越喜欢这个主意。 可口可乐和百事可乐！太完美了！不仅如此，它还符合他们的情感。 麦当劳一家是来自旧金山的第二代嬉皮士，他们一直不赞成社会上猖獗的商业化。 麦克唐纳博士喜欢告诉他的学生，生活在城市里的人平均每天看到多达5000个广告。 5000个广告！还有什么比给你的孩子取可口可乐和百事可乐更好的方式来纪念这个男人呢？ 这将是对企业如何控制人们生活的一种讽刺。 见鬼，他们的姓已经是麦当劳了。 为什么不给孩子取名为可口可乐和百事可乐呢？ 自然，当当地媒体得知这些婴儿的名字时，可口可乐和百事可乐公司一开始并不高兴。 他们扬言要起诉这家人。 给婴儿取和流行软饮料一样的名字

was an infringement of the companies' copyrights, the lawyers grumbled. (Yeah, as if consumers would confuse the infants with sugary carbonated beverages.) In the end, the corporate giants decided that kids named Coke and Pepsi would be the best advertising they would ever have. And it didn't cost them a dime. This, they agreed, was even better than having kids named Jimmy and Suzy walk around wearing Coke and Pepsi T-shirts. Of course, growing up with the names Coke and Pepsi can be tough, especially in middle school. Both of the twins encountered a good deal of ribbing when they got to sixth grade, especially Pepsi. "Hey, soda girl! You're flat!" But the thing is, no matter how unusual someone's name is, after you hear it a few dozen times, the name starts to fit the person, like a comfortable pair of jeans. You can't imagine that boy or girl ever having a different name. Eventually, kids stopped looking at Pepsi and

律师们抱怨说，这是对公司版权的侵犯。 （是的，好像消费者会把婴儿和含糖碳酸饮料混淆似的。）最后，这些企业巨头们认为，以可口可乐和百事可乐为名字的孩子将是他们有史以来最好的广告。 而且他们一分钱也没花。 他们一致认为，这比让名叫吉米和苏西的孩子穿着可口可乐和百事可乐的t恤走来走去更好。 当然，伴随着可口可乐和百事可乐的名字成长可能会很艰难，尤其是在中学时期。 这对双胞胎在上六年级时都受到了很多取笑，尤其是百事可乐。 “嘿，卖汽水的女孩！”你平!”但问题是，不管一个人的名字多么不寻常，在你听了几十次之后，这个名字就会开始适合这个人，就像一条舒适的牛仔裤。 你无法想象那个男孩或女孩会有一个不同的名字。 最终，孩子们不再看百事可乐了