Other Ways Things Could Have Worked Out, Variation #4

There’s no reason why you couldn’t start your own business, except that you have no idea what sort of business to start, so let’s call it a Specialty Juice business. Sure. You could rent one of those storefronts downtown, somewhere around the Post Office that nobody uses and the electrolysis place. Possibly right around where the Downtown Revitalization Project is working to revitalize that one block by digging up all the dead trees and replacing the concrete with authentic-looking, old-timey cobblestones. Which will be great if the Downtown Revitalization Project actually finishes that particular bit of revitalization. Which it won’t. Don’t you know it won’t, in your heart of hearts? You moved here because you said to yourself, it’ll be wonderful—the standard of living is cheap enough that you could get an apartment right in the center of things, and you could just, you know, walk everywhere. There was a grocery store, an old IGA, right downtown! You didn’t even need a car! It was like living in Europe! Except that the old IGA smelled funny and the refrigerated aisles didn’t seem, well, refrigerated, and after a year it closed down anyway. So you take the bus to the big chain grocery store, out near the highway. It’s do-able. You certainly don’t have enough money to both start a Specialty Juice business and buy a car. At the big chain grocery store you examine different sorts of fruit and imagine which combinations would be both surprising and delicious. You have a mango in one hand and a genetically-modified apple that is supposed to taste like a grape in the other. You tell yourself, it’s amazing what can be done nowadays. Keep telling yourself that.