Supply and Demand

I started my last post, Mid Winter Rant, with a different idea than how it ended up.  It happens often that my writing takes on a life of its own. It directs itself in a way. It’s not pretty by any means, the syntax is usually clunky and the vocabulary limited, but a few quick edits brings enough coherence to keep it. 

Such was the case with Mid Winter Rant.  As soon as I mentioned how many Canadian residents were born in a different country the executive part of my psychology left for coffee or beer or something and this curious “alt.self” took over. 

It’s a phenomenon reported by many writers and not just wordsmiths either. I hear the phrase “This song just wrote itself” from serious composers. I’ve experienced it myself and it does seem like something else is directing me at the piano when I’m in the “zone” as the sports guys say.

Whether there’s anything spiritual about any of this I’ll leave to the yogis and shamans.

My initial discontent was sparked by a couple of weather events although those  events weren’t the issue. We had a week with freezing rain, snow, partial thaw and a flash freeze. I wasn’t keeping up with clearing the snow so it got a hard crust on it from the freezing rain. More snow fell and then temperatures rose sufficiently to turn about a quarter of it into slush. The flash freeze came and I was stuck with three or four inches of solid ice on my driveway and half that much on my front porch.

And I’m not kidding about the solid part. There was no point in trying to chisel it out although I gave it a shot. I needed salt. 

In Search Of Sodium Chloride

Petro Canada……..Sold out

Canadian Tire……..Sold out

Shell Gas Station…Sold out

Home Depot………Sold out

 The customer service desk at Home Depot

Me:    Hey big shot muckity muck international company guys, this is Canada. We get ice. Lots of it. Where’s the damned salt?

Employee:    First of all, the workers here are all Canadian and you sir, have failed to observe that everyone within 25 square kilometres has ice, they all want salt and they’ve all been here before you. And at minimum wage I’m not exceptionally motivated to be civil so take your complaints, put them in your hat, piss in it and pull it down over your ears.

Well I guess I got told. 

My point is this: If they know this is a regular occurrence would it kill somebody to order an extra truckload or two in December?

“If you know this happens every year would it kill you to put half a dozen bags in the garage before winter?”………….. 

That would be my Father speaking, Pinwheel Heffernan, as he spins in his grave.

A stickler for responsible planning, he knew nothing about the joy of blame…..

I take a size 32 30 in jeans. Once a year or so I reluctantly venture to my local Walmart to buy a pair and there’s dozens of every possible waist-leg combinations but not that one. Sometimes, if I persist there’s a pair buried deep but it has weird stitching or it’s faded everywhere except the bottom of the fly making it look like you peed your pants. 

I asked a Wal-Martian why. 

“ It’s the most popular size” she replied

“Then why not stock twice as many of this size and half as many of the short and rotund?”

This may have been a reasonable question had the employee not been short and rotund.

“You have At-Ti-Tude!” she proclaimed in her curious mixture of East Indian and Martian accents.