Free The Crisps

Free The Crisps

Once upon a time I had a friend called Ben. At least I'm pretty sure his name was Ben. To be honest I can barely remember him or what he looked like now, but those kind of details are pretty unimportant really. So anyway, he was a pretty normal kid, raised up in a small town, given the average state school education, convincing him through a regime of repetition and repression that he was neither terribly intelligent or capable of achieving anything beyond the very, very ordinary. So he behaved well, and towed the line, and bought into what the world was drumming into him. Eventually he achieved some fairly average results and was provided with some uninspiring career advice. The computer-generated list ranged from florist, to diver, to fish farm worker. Everyone in his class received the same options in a different order, it seemed. One exceptionally bright young spark received "fish-farm manager" as his primary vocation, but he scoffed at such a lowly premonition as he already knew he was to go to university and train to be a physicist. With this final masterstroke of brainwashing bearing heavy on his mind, Ben was cast out into the wide world to seek his fortune.

And so he looked around him, seeing the world of possibilities laid out ahead. He imagined many beautiful futures for himself, each more appealing than the last. But then he remembered that he wasn't supposed to do any of those things (or so it seemed). With a pervasive sense of realism he walked into the local supermarket and applied for a job working on the tills. He sailed through the application and interview process, and within the week he was donning his garish polo shirt and polyester trousers and strolling down the road to work. For a while he was content with this existence, chatting with people and whiling away the hours. As we all know, however, a dull job can only hold the attention for so long. He started to feel a slight ennui, a nagging feeling that this just isn't right, this isn't how It's supposed to be for me. Time dragged itself on still further, the rotation of work, eat, sleep grinding itself out gradually. The nagging got worse and worse and worse until Ben felt like his head was ready to burst.

And then it came to him. He was sat in his room, eating a slightly over-microwaved pizza, and his head actually did burst. Figuratively at least. He decided to set himself a little test, see how his new idea would work. So he got a pencil, and placed it on the table in front of him. He focused on the pencil, imagining his hand reaching out and pushing it off the table. After a few hours of maintaining this ludicrous pose, hunched over a coffee table staring at a pencil, concentrating on moving the pencil and keeping his hand still, he was close to tears. Then finally, the sliver of wood and graphite shifted slightly, and rolled it's way over the glass then dropped down onto the carpet.

"Fuck yeah, I'm the dude," he thought to himself.

So the next day at work he called a friend over during his lunch break.

"Watch this," he said, and placed a carrot on the table in front of him, and began to focus his energy, scrunching up his face and clenching his fists. The friend watched, feeling a strange combination of scorn, curiosity and pity. But the carrot just sat, busy being a carrot. Eventually, Ben looked away from the carrot and said, "dunno, must be too big or something". The friend chuckled quietly, and patted Ben on the back. Once he was alone in the staff room Ben picked up the carrot, put it in his pocket and returned to the till.

That night, at home, Ben placed the carrot on the coffee table and started his little game again. He focused on it, and within a few minutes, the carrot twitched, moved an inch vertically, then set itself back down on the table.

"Oh yeah", said Ben to himself, "that's right. I am the dude."

So he thought on this for a while, trying to see why it had worked in his house but not earlier at work.

Could it be the table?

Was the one at work too sticky?

Or the position of his house in relation to some nearby ley-line?

Various random and sometimes daft ideas floated through his head, until one finally slipped in which he liked the look of.

The next day he went to work as usual. Come lunchtime, he called his friend over again. The friend trotted over eagerly, smiling at his his thoughts of what crazy Ben would try to show him next. So Ben walked over to the nearby shelves, and picked up a packet of crisps at random from the shelf. Prawn cocktail, or some other unpalatable flavour. He turned to his friend and, with a wry smile, opened the packet. Inside there were a lot of crisps, and a small piece of cardboard wrapped in plastic. He removed the plastic wrapper, unfolded the paper, and read out aloud to his friend:

"You Have Won A Free Packet Of Crisps."

The friend burst into fits of hysterics, amused by Ben's knowing gaze. Ben looked at his friend, and what he saw wasn't quite the same as what he had seen a few minutes earlier. His gaze changed, and he walked away.

The next day at work, the friend looked around for Ben at lunch, hoping that he would have some other bizarre little spectacle for him to amuse himself with. He asked the store manager, a gruff man with a neatly trimmed beard, where Ben was.

"Dunno," the manager replied, "hasn't showed up today, no phone call, and to be honest if that's his attitude we don't need him here."

I can't say I ever saw Ben after that, I walked past his house a few times but the lights were always off, curtains drawn.

Eventually a "For Sale" sign was put up and the house moved on, lights blazing and curtains open wide.