I spend a lot of time weighing important options, like which tissue-box design says what I want to project through paper products.
When I ponder which stripe or swoosh best reflects my commitment to athletics, I consider the effect of my purchase on my children. When I am asked whether I want skim milk, two percent or whole milk in my coffee, my mind trickles out of my ears onto the floor as I wonder whether a small coffee is really a tall one. Or whether a large wouldn't be better described as a "taller." And why my coffees change ethnicity as they get larger, going from grande to venti.
Shopping in town makes me reevaluate who I am, when all I really want is tomatoes or shampoo or a vacuum cleaner. The salesperson asks me the gender of the child for whom I'm buying socks or a car seat, as if the gear that warms your feet or saves your life cares. I need a family meeting to determine whether we want our orange juice to be low pulp, medium pulp or nothing but pulp. Do we require vitamin D, vitamin C, or calcium? Organic, or inorganic? A splash of strawberry, pineapple or cherry juice in it? Caf or decaf? Tall or grande?
Even catalogs assault me, imploring that I order bedskirts to hide the lower extremities of my bed that have been shamelessly on display for a decade, or contour rugs to prevent cold spots from shocking the sensitive feet straddling a toilet. I prefer to shop, as I have for most of my life, on roadsides, where it takes all day to buy an appliance.
Back in Nairobi, I would stop by to see Enoch, who sold used lawn mowers on the roadside.
One day, I ask him whether he sells vacuum cleaners because they are kind of like a lawn mower; he shows me a vacuum cleaner that appears to have been brought across the sea by the English centuries ago. There is a metal canister, a foot-long tube, and an attachment that collects the dirt, ushering it through a piece of ancient felt, which, Enoch shows me, needs to be shaken out after every use.
I put the vacuum cleaner and Enoch in my car, and drive them to my house to test the vacuum cleaner because of the paucity of electrical outlets on the roadside. Enoch plugs in the machine, and my house loses power. Fortunately, I have a small generator, which Enoch had fixed two weeks ago, because it's kind of like a lawn mower. Power is restored in my house, but the generator is hardly working.
We operate the vacuum cleaner, whose motto is clearly: It's better than nothing! I turn off the generator, and pay for the vacuum cleaner, which is better than nothing. I ask Enoch whether he can fix the generator again, because it's kind of like a lawn mower, but he needs his tools, which he left on the roadside. I drive him back to the roadside where he collects his tools, and then I drive him back to my house. He discovers that when he repaired the generator, he had put it together backward, because it's not that much like a lawn mower. He asks for a piece of string. I have rope, and a laundry line (to dry the clothes), and yarn (for art projects) but no string. I find a ribbon torn from a box of chocolates, and this fills Enoch's need.
The generator is fixed, and I drive Enoch back to the roadside. After one day, I am the proud owner of a vacuum cleaner, which is kind of like a lawn mower and better than nothing.
As in life, satisfaction is never guaranteed.
