It's 6:22 when Megs comes through the front door, ambushed by Jillian, arms locked around her terrarium.

"Look what Dad got for me!" 

Megan admires the chunk of neon-green turf carpeting the floor of Jilly-bean's glass enclosure. She jerks her head back when she's assaulted by the toxic vapors. 

"Oof, those lawn chemicals." She rubs her nose. "You got this from Josh?" she asks, her voice rising in shock.

"My friend, Emiliano supplied the specimen."

"Who's Emiliano?"

"One of the groundskeeper guys we met on Saturday. At the office park."

Megs smiles. "That was really nice of him."

I direct to my daughter. "Keep that terrarium outside. Nobody wants to deal with pesticide drift."

"Okay." Jillian carries the terrarium onto the front porch.

"I ordered a pizza." I check the time. "The pizza delivery guy should be here any minute."

My phone rings. 

"Hello?"

"Phil. It's Lowell."

"Oh. Hi."

"Hey. Sorry to invade after hours."

"No, no. You're not invading."

"Hey, listen. The team from Saucy Cat is flying in for a meeting tomorrow afternoon. Thought it might be a good thing if you could sit in. Kinda last minute. I get that. Does that work for you? Three o'clock?"

"Three tomorrow? Yeah, I think I can do that."

"You know where our office is?"

"Yeah. I'll see you there." 

"I'll send you the new campaign comps. Take a look if you get a chance."

"I definitely will." I pause before adding, "I'm usually the guy who brings donuts to meetings, but in this case..."

"Huh?"

Overhearing the conversation, Megs winces. Silence on the phone.

"I was just making a joke. Sounded better in my head."

"Oh. Okay," Lowell says flatly.

"I'll see you tomorrow."

"Right."

Megs shakes her head. "You're trying too hard."

                                                                                      #######

I spend most of the evening and the next morning researching Saucy Cat Creative. So these are the geniuses responsible for the new Aunt Betsy's Donut campaign. There's a pic of a woman caught in a rainstorm, hair pasted to her head, clothes dripping, wearing a very sad expression. The headline: YOU COULD OF CHANGED YOUR HOLE DAY. 

Another ad shows a deliriously happy young woman holding a donut, a rainbow and unicorn behind her. The headline: IT'S A HOLE NEW DAY.

A third ad features a guy with a bag of golf clubs slung over his shoulder. He's holding a donut. The headline: A HOLE IN ONE.

This is the kind of advertising I abhor. Some Art Director thinks he's being clever by focusing on the donut hole and running an entire campaign based on bad hole puns. All donuts have holes. How is that a differentiator? Never mind that your ad campaign has nothing to do with the product, which happens to be the best donuts on the planet.  

But the icing on my anger donut is the use of "could of" instead of the "could have." Why? Is it meant to provoke controversy? Or are the creatives at Saucy Cat simply illiterate? 

Hey, Saucy Cat. Your hole ad campaign sucks. 

Okay, I vented. Phil the team player is on board, buckled in, and ready for take-off.

                                                                                            #######

3:48 PM. Sonny, PJ and I sit in a conference room at Aunt Betsy's Homemade Donuts. Lowell enters.

Sonny checks his phone. "They should be here any minute."

"Mark's a hella cool dude," says PJ. "You're totally gonna dig him."

"Yeah, he's great," Lowell adds. Is she being sarcastic? Or maybe she just didn't feel like putting in the work to make that sound sincere.

"What up, what up?" A loud voice booms in the hallway. Ten seconds later a stocky guy in a leather jacket and too-tight jeans hops into the room and strikes a pose, eyes wide, mouth agape, arms in the air. Mark sports the requisite three-day-growth beard and shaved head.

"Hey, Mark," says Sonny getting out of his chair. Mark pulls him in for a hug and slaps him hard on the back. 

"Hey, dude." PJ joins in the group hug.

Mark releases Sonny and blows a kiss at Lowell. She smiles politely.

Standing in the hallway awaiting permission to enter are Sasha and Daniel. Sasha has so much hair that it takes a moment for me to realize that she's wearing a scarf slung around her neck. 

Then there's Daniel. I think there's a version of this guy at every ad or creative agency I've ever visited. Black jeans and boots. He wears a black turtleneck sweater and wool cap every day of his life, even in the broiling heat of a sweltering summer.

"Who wants a coffee?" Using his boisterous voice and broad movements, it's like Mark's on stage projecting to the people in the very back row of the auditorium's balcony. 

"Sasha, get us some coffees." He counts pointing to Lowell, Sonny, and PJ. "One, two, three." When he gets to me he says, "New guy. You wanna coffee, bruh?"

"No, thanks."

Then back to Sasha. "Buzz down to that Starbucks and get us four coffees and make mine a Venti." He claps his hands together. "Let's go! Go!" 

She runs down the hall.

He claps louder and plops into a chair.  He gestures to Daniel standing in the doorway. "Come on, come on. Get in here." 

Daniel enters the conference room, slides off his shoulder bag and lays it on the table.

"New guy." He points at me again. "Intro, yo."

"I'm Phil Robiski."

"Robiski? Nice Italian kid, capiche?" He laughs at his own joke.

"Phil is our PR guy," says Lowell.

"Oh. Okay. PR. I thought this was supposed to be a creative meeting."

"It is." She smiles at me.

"Tell me if I'm going too fast for you," he says giving me the side-eye. "Hey, Daniel. While I'm young." With both hands, he gives the universal sign for the impatient "Come on, come on."

Then turning his attention back to Lowell he grins. "I got a hole bunch of awesome for you." Before she can respond he says, "You do something different with your hair? Looks good."

Daniel removes a stack of ads mounted on illustration board and stands them in line on a presentation shelf. Ugh, there's the girl in the rain ad that I hate. I keep a pleasant smile on my face as I watch Daniel add the unicorn and rainbow ad and the golf ad to the collection.

"We set the bar pretty damn high but we nailed it," Mark barks. "Went full Gucci."

He pulls a new ad from Daniel's bag. There's a photo of a glass of milk beside a chocolate-covered Aunt Betsy's donut. The headline reads: WHEN YOU NEED YOUR HOLE MILK.

"Hole milk? Brilliant, right?"

"Awesome!" says Sonny. 

PJ adds, "Totally. Hole milk."

Lowell nods and smiles.

"Fire right there!" Mark shouts. "Hundo P!"

I hear Megs' words in my head. "You're trying too hard."

Mark takes another ad from the bag but hides it against his chest.

"This one's edgy. But that's how Saucy Cat twerks. Y'all ready for this?"

Everyone nods.

He spins the ad to face us. There's a kid in a ghost costume, actually a sheet with two eye holes, and he's holding a donut. The headline reads: HOLE-Y SHEET.

Mark lets out a blast of full-throated laughter. He fist-bumps Daniel who says, "Bible."

"It's like for Halloween, right?" Mark chuckles.

"It's cute but I don't think it's gonna work for us," Lowell says politely.

"Too edgy," says Mark. He looks offended. "Could be we got too far out over our skis on this one."

"Love the hole milk ad," says Sonny enthusiastically.

"The bomb," PJ adds.

I decide to test the water. "I have a question about the first one." I point to the ad.

"Rain girl?" Mark asks.

"Yeah."

"The chick's having a totally f'ed up day, see?"

"Yeah, I see."

"If she had an Aunty Betsy donut, it could've changed her hole day. Can't believe I need to explain this. Is it me?" He looks around the room at the Aunt Betsy team with a snide grin on his face. 

"No, I get that. Why could of changed your day?"

"I'm not getting this."

"Why not could have changed your day?"

"That's the way people talk, dude." He mimes sipping a cup of tea with his pinkie extended. He affects an absolutely abysmal cockney accent. "Speakin' the queen's English, are we mate?"

PJ snickers.

I fight to retain my fake smile.

"We don't want people thinking we're stupid."

The room goes quiet.

"We?" Mark's voice rises almost an octave. "We?"

"The ad still works if you use could have instead of could of, and in the process, we would avoid the appearance of being illiterate."

Mark's eyes widen. "Illiterate? Dude, you just don't get the creative. That's all." He shakes his shiny head. "PR guy. What did I expect? Why don't we all stay in our lanes?"

I look at Lowell. "If I'm out of line here, just say."

"No. That's why you're here."

Mark's jaw muscles tighten, he narrows his eyes at me. "Why you gettin' salty on me, bruh?"

"No salt. I'm not saying anything about the creative. That's your area."

"Wheelhouse," says Mark.

Wheelhouse. Add that to the list of words I hate.

"Right. Public relations is all about the image Aunt Betsy's Homemade Donuts is projecting to the public, to the consumer."

"We're dropping the homemade," Mark says with a dismissive, nasty tone.

"Has that been decided?" I turn to the Aunt Betsy team. PJ and Sonny look to Lowell.

"I'm okay with it," says Sonny.

"We haven't made a final decision yet," she replies.

"We talked about targeting a younger audience." Mark gets louder. He pleads his case to Lowell.

It's evident that this guy is getting pissed off. I add some fuel to the fire.

"Going for a younger audience? So your logic is that young people don't like foods that are homemade? They'd rather eat mass-produced crap? Okay, Boomer."

"Nobody said that." Mark's tone is more combative.

"Aunt Betsy has captured an impressive market segment relying on the image of Aunt Betsy herself, a charming matronly woman with an adorable smile who loves nothing more than baking the most delicious baked goods on the planet. Homemade takes a little longer. But it's worth it."

Sonny and PJ nod in unison.

"So basic. That was then. This is now," Mark growls. He looks around the room.

"I'm feeling the homemade," says Lowell. "Feels right."

PJ nods. 

"Yeah, kinda does," says Sonny.

"Homemade takes a little longer. But it's worth it," she repeats.

"This isn't what we talked about." Mark's face is red.

Sasha bursts in with a carry-out tray of coffee and drops it onto the table. Her hair is wind-swept, her face is flushed. She's out of breath. Mark grabs his Venti out of the tray and gulps.

"So we're saying for all intensive purposes we're going back to homemade," he sighs.

Intensive purposes? This guy truly is illiterate. 

"We're not going back," says Lowell. "We never left homemade."

Mark groans then in a quieter voice says, "Can I get some face time, Lowell? Just you and me? 

"Look, you get the greenlight on the hole campaign. Except for the Halloween ad. The campaign is fresh. It's fun."

"Right."

"But don't drop homemade."

"How we gonna find space for all that copy in the ads? Aunt Betsy's Homemade Donuts? I can't even."

Daniel shakes his head mournfully.

"You'll figure it out," says Lowell. "You're Saucy Cat Creative."