Wednesday 8 April 2015

E is for Easy Money









Everybody knows somebody who works in a store, right?



That's all you have to do. Pluck a job out of thin air and slap it in their face and before you know it you'll have them convinced their Aunty Maud has crossed the velvet curtain. It's called shot gunning.You can throw anything at them and they'll make it fit. You just provide the match and they'll set fire to the mailbox.


'Somebody is giving me a nursing badge. So who works with medicines? Who looks after old folk? Who works in the pharmacy? Who takes all the pills?'


You see how it works? It's easy money. You give them a triangle and they'll turn it into a circle. There's no magic involved. They do it all for you.



When I was kid I used to have a lemonade stall in front of our house but I soon realised that by the time you bought all the lemons and squeezed the life out of them all you had left was a bruised ego and enough change to buy a can of Seven Up.





So now I don't have to squeeze any lemons. I just squeeze as much money as I can out of the bastards.


'I'm getting a pair of black boots so who was in the army? In the navy? In the police? Who worked in the shoe shop?'




They fall for it every time. I can convince anybody that their dog is nipping at my ankles. That their Nan loved the funeral service and that, yes, sometimes you can smell their perfume, their favourite flower or their Lambert and Butler Superkings. They'll believe everything you tell them because they want to believe there's a better place out there beyond the thunderdome.  That's there's an Emerald City at the end of the yellow brick road.



A place where you don't have to squeeze the lemons or the apples that life throws at you just so that you can buy a can of Dandelion and Burdock.





                   



                                                         (C) Ally Atherton 2015











336 Words for the Light & Shade Challenge and the A to Z Blog Challenge




2 comments:

  1. Very interesting character here, Ally.

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  2. Thanks Chuck, I just wrote it off the cuff to try to catch up in the A to Z challenge :)

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