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Ranboo stares down at the list and it’s just paper.
Bread. Milk. And those are two items.
It’s a grocery list. It has groceries written on it, groceries that Ranboo is going to buy. That’s why he’s at the store. That’s why anybody’s at the store.
He’s at the grocery store, and they sell the groceries he’s going to buy. Bread and milk.
They sell these, and Ranboo- and he knows this because of course they sell bread and milk. Those are two very average groceries, and that’s what very average grocery stores tend to sell. Hell, even some gas stations sell bread and milk!
Or convenience stores. That’s why they’re convenient, he supposes.
Ranboo is going to be buying groceries. Soon. Two groceries. And he knows the store sells them because he’s standing in front of the shelves where those groceries are.
Groceries that Ranboo is going to buy from the grocery store, but he can’t find them. Not because he can’t find the aisles. No, the aisles are labeled, and he found them easily. Grain, and dairy. Two connected aisles for the convenience of customers who are buying both groceries from this exact grocery store that he is currently trying to be a customer of, and it’s nothing more, nothing less.
Internally paralyzed, Ranboo surveys the wide selection of bread while clutching his very specific list with a very non-specific list.
This was decidedly not convenient, Ranboo decides while his eyes focus on the vast array of jugs decorated by dancing cows and “low fat” labels.
No, no. It’s not all from cows! There is goat, almond, oat, coconut; even soy milk decided to join the parade of choices.
Choices that Ranboo would make, if he could get his eyes to read and his brain to understand. Because no matter how hard he looks, he can’t focus on the milk. (Because no matter how long he stares, he knows he’s going to have to decide.)
And after this decision, he will make countless other decisions.
Will he choose the skim or the whole milk? Will he buy the whole-grain or the white bread? Will he take the bus or a cab? And after he makes even the minimum amount of decisions required for today, there is tomorrow. And after that, there is another tomorrow, and another, and so on forth. Forever.
Tomorrow, he will get up at sunrise, or 10:35 am. Tomorrow he will read, or play video games.
Tomorrow, he will have either toast or cereal.
And the worst part? What he does today will affect those tomorrows, and every decision he will make, forever!
If there are 10 different brands that each sell 10 types of bread in this location, that’s already 100 possible outcomes. Then, if he wanted to top the toast with beans and there were 23 canned beans each from, again, 10 brands... then that is a bigger number than Ranboo can calculate without using his fingers. The number of decisions from one grocery trip and the weight of its inevitability crushes Ranboo. He feels so small compared to this monument to consumerism.
And for Christ’s sake, there are all those different timelines where he chooses to have a bowl of cereal! A bowl of delicious, creamy cereal instead of a crusty loaf of headache-inducing, time-intensive, existential-crisis bread topped with an unhealthy amount of watery legumes and regret, because who in their right mind would ever possibly choose to consume soggy slices of panic attack over a perfect, crunchy grain soup?
Shoot. All of that doesn’t even begin to consider all the potentially unsafe or inhumane working conditions involved in the chain of harvesting, processing, and selling the crops. And supporting that through buying a single grocery?
Oh, no matter what Ranboo chooses, he is going to be buying something that will directly affect the sales! The poor manager will have to order more of that item, and that will affect how much of the convenient bread and milk other customers can buy, and what brands are offered. What if his purchase means one brand isn’t bought anymore? What if other customers liked that kind best, so he’s inconveniencing them and therefore ruining their entire experience, maybe even their whole day?
That is a very significant difference from a seemingly very insignificant choice.
And these are all small issues, a conflict that exists in Ranboo’s mind and his alone. But it would still be all his fault.
All because he decided that he would buy two very average groceries offered to all the customers who come to this not-so-convenient store, where the grain and dairy aisles intersect to make the selection of one or more of the too-many products from the too-many brands, (that may or may not be actively fighting unionization of their employees through illegal means of persuasion), easier.
- ~ - ~ -
Ranboo isn’t thinking any of this. He’ll reason his way to these explanations later, but he isn’t thinking much of anything right now.
He isn’t calculating all the different ways he could enjoy his morning with or without a buttery bun that will explode in a bean-soaked mess as he takes a bite. He isn’t fretting about the issues faced by many workers in an age of aggressive capitalism. And he certainly isn’t afraid of buying a rectangular prism of compressed grain. It’s just upsetting that there is milk and bread, or bread and milk.
It is bread, and it is milk. And Ranboo feels the overwhelming urge to cry.