Manizesto

I’ve had a Snickers bar sitting on my desk at work for 8 days now. Shall I eat it now? No, too early for empty calories and the sluggish, sloppy gut I will have right after. How about now? It would be a nice after lunch treat. No, not now. Too soon. I can’t eat all that right now. I’ll have some gum instead. Hmmm, that Snickers is starting to look pretty good. Sort of. But it’s just so big and I’m really that not hungry just now. And I’m almost out the door to head home, eat dinner and go to the gym. Tomorrow then.

And on and on. And on.

The standoff is sort of like that WWI movie with the skinny, scared Italian guy hiding in the trenches, and he’s alone, and everyone around him is dead, and he has to stick his hands in the dead guys pockets to get their ammo and maybe some acqua or booze or whatever. Then when the shooting and gas bombs or whatever they’re called, start up again, he sort of gets antsy and can’t sit there alone because, he’s pretty much going crazy, my friends, and then he can’t take it any more and stands up to start fighting and zip zip zip, three bullets right in the guts and he’s done. All that waiting for, like, nothing. He was going to die anyway, you know?

That shiny happy packaging staring at me from the corner of my eyes every day, sort of wearing me away, flapping it’s little flappy wings to get my attention and crinkling a smile, saying how it will satisfy me-it’s putting me like the Italian. And I feel myself losing it a little.

Try not to do that to your customers, if you can.

[Photo by Ritesh Kapur.]