Food
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Cadwell NOT Caldwell
Eat my Food
[3 minute read ]
Fiction
The shopkeeper's wife, Boonie, in a village somewhere in England, doesn't see customers as integral to the business. She doesn't see them as stakeholders, or as real entities with the capacity to make decisions. As to the latter part, she has a point. Living in a village in the modern world does disrupt acting out many decisions. Is it worth it, to get in a car and drive one and a half miles to the next village for a couple of litres of milk? There is a petrol station in the same village but misplaced principles may inadvertently steer some people away from there.
'I am not paying that for a litre of milk!'
No, instead, people, rather than walk or cycle a round trip of three miles to the next village, habituate their local shop / Post Office where Boonie reigns. Habituate, as in stand there talking to the shop assistant regardless of the toe-tapping queue behind them. 'Oh! I didn't realise you was there.' You did but you are selfish and self-absorbed and you placed someone below you on the social hierarchy scale. Boonie encouraged you, didn't she? In any case the customers behind you look foreign to you, don't they?
Boonie, the shopkeeper's wife is decidedly happy that there is a constant stream of revenue to indulge her fancies once the financial liabilities are taken care of. I have deliberately demoted her position to being secondary to the shopkeeper, because I am biased towards her; not because she is female and the 'shopkeeper' is male. No, because I detest greed. In truth, she is at least equal to her husband and I would not be at all surprised if she outranked him when it comes to following through with shaping his opinion. She is, in fact, also the shopkeeper, but not the male one.
She has eaten the profits, it is obvious to anyone standing outside the shop. She and another person cannot pass each other in the usually ample space behind the counter. Her voice is loud; she is not demure or modest in her speech. She is forceful and expectant of an agreement to her opinion. She, of course, relies on her resilient energy to grind down any opposition to her uneducated thrust. An argument could go on for a week and her opponent would shrivel. Blurting her opinion she doubles down on it in a sly and unfocused manner. Her husband is kind and considerate. She, however, presents as being less concerned with easing suffering by meditation and consciousness than by easing her life through the conduit of channeling money from the shop to spend on a more comfortable lifestyle stuffed with optional, discretionary goods. She puts dishes in the dishwasher and waddles with her two friends half a mile to the village border and back while the dishes are washed for her. Red-faced and panting in winter, she is obviously absent in summer. Her children are grown now, but she wonders why there are car-washes and washing machines and dish-washers, but she still had to humble herself to kneel next to the bath and clean them.
Customers to her are a source of money and her husband has been smothered into submitting to her greed. The lure of money is strong for many. Work hard at your own expense and reap the large financial reward, of course. Eying customers and making decisions from behind a counter in terms of how gullible and lazy they are is quite another thing. She waits, toad-like, invisibly licking her swollen lips, keeping them moist so her tongue can shoot out and grab the money. A new kitchen next month; a long holiday next summer; a new car soon, and cake for tea. Like so many other people, her skin is clammy and she sticks her invisible medals of financial gain and spending to it, with a contented and self-indulgent, secret, smile; her smile, the one she lets trusting customers see. She already has a plan on how to control her husband's protests; It has worked in the past and it will continue to work. His goal is peace; hers is satisfaction.
She resented her young children, now grown and flown from her reach. When they were young a tiny slice of cake would suffice to satiate their desire. Her husband, habitually living to ease her indulgences, has always took none, leaving her the three-quarters that she had carefully carved out. As the children grew her own slices became smaller and theirs grew ever larger; and as young adults she knew they would judge her harshly if she had her own cake. She would never have accepted their truth. Now, she can sweetly say to her husband, the only other eater at their table, 'Don't fancy any? Well, we shouldn't let it go to waste.' Her husband smiles and feels his ribs and thinks of the expensive holiday she has booked. He wonders when she lost the peach fuzz on her cheeks and grew the spikes on prickly pears.
'We should keep the price of chocolate bars high; I need a new kitchen, like Molly has.' She commands. She looks forward to the best before date to pass on the unsold Mars and Twix, and counts the extra profit from the hiked-up margin.
Her greed is born out of her bovine intelligence, just like cows chewing their cud, she really would eat her food twice. Donkeys subscribe to her online lessons on stubbornness, and hamsters and chipmunks watch her home and holiday videos on YouTube, to learn how to stuff their furry faces.
I like people who are comfortable in their skin; large, small, obese or skinny, spotty, unblemished, black, brown and white, even red. I don't like people who direct other people's money - money they need for food - into their own bellies.
