Returns Line
He looks at me with the same excited eyes he’s had since birth. He’s not naive so much as uncomplicated by the kinds of things most of us are. He thinks less in extended metaphor and cliché plays on words and more in numbers. When no one is looking we communicate like any two people could if they tried hard enough. If anyone is watching however, we start fake fights just to keep up the illusion that oil and water don’t mix. He tells me he stole a key chain once when he was a kid. Felt so bad about he threw it behind his desk in the hopes of forgetting his crimes. I laugh out loud because I did the same thing with a Barbie sweater at 6. Back before puberty we cried over $4 guilt, and begged parents to bring us the stores to rectify our sins. These days guilt is an unfortunate side effect of life we remedy with the wonderful learned reaction called denial. As long as the loss or penalty is not death, monetary loss, or an even bigger inconvenience then the guilt at hand is brushed off as the result of ethical standards none of us can uphold. Don’t get me wrong, I steal all the time, but I always buy something as well. The complementary note cards and eye shadow from Longs drugs are just the chains way of saying “Thank you Natalie for letting us rip you off on a regular basis for soap and toilet paper”. Today, we don’t cry over stolen goods. in fact we’ve moved up the ladder. Exception after exception has made thievery 100% acceptable. People are the new trinkets were trying to 5-finger discount.
I try to tell him these things don’t work. I should know. I played Julia Roberts character in “My Best Friends Wedding”, but there was a plot twist. I won. Then 1 year later I lost bigger then if I had just left the merchandise on the counter. See there’s a big difference between cheep trinkets and people. You can’t return people to their rightful owners. So when they’re defective and begin to show all the same signs of faulty functionality, you have to give them away. No refund available.
I try to tell him these things don’t work. I should know. I played Julia Roberts character in “My Best Friends Wedding”, but there was a plot twist. I won. Then 1 year later I lost bigger then if I had just left the merchandise on the counter. See there’s a big difference between cheep trinkets and people. You can’t return people to their rightful owners. So when they’re defective and begin to show all the same signs of faulty functionality, you have to give them away. No refund available.