The Paradox Of Choice

Aaron Axton sighed as he checked the score of the basketball game on his cheap knockoff smartphone. He’d have loved to watch it on TV. But he’d cancelled cable so he could afford a Vitamix blender. The game would probably be on at his corner bar, the Silver Chair, but he was tired of the passive-aggressive glances he’d get from the bartender at the when he tried to stretch out one two-dollar beer to last an entire basketball game. Oh, well, he’d made his decision and he was going to make the best of it. As he sipped another perfectly blended strawberry-banana smoothie, he wondered if he was just imagining that tinge of bitterness on his tongue…

Baron Braxton smiled as he shuffled along with the crowd out of the arena. What a fantastic basketball game! And he’d been close enough to have to dodge droplets of the players’ sweat. Buying that Ninja 3-in-1 blender was the best idea he’d ever had. He still made exquisitely blended smoothies and soups with Total Crushing Technology, but the price left him enough cash to enjoy the finer things. Then he saw a homeless kid, couldn’t have been more than 12, with a sign that said PLEASE HELP ME BUY BOOKS. What the hell, why not? Baron handed the kid a $50 bill. Twenty-six years later, after suffering a massive heart attack, Baron opened his eyes to see the grown-up face of that child smiling back at him. “It was touch and go for a while there,” the surgeon assured him, “but you’re gonna pull through just fine. Say, have we ever met?”…

Carin Claxton cackled as she revved her four Ninja 3-in-1 blenders to a deafening pitch. She’d show those stupid so-called friends of hers! Let them invite everybody else over to watch the basketball game and drink dumb smoothies from their idiot Vitamix blender! She was just fine staying home with the FOUR Ninja blenders she’d bought for the same price! Carin spun among the roaring, whirring blenders until the dizziness and the noise made her feel as if she was falling into some kind of portal to an alternate world, a world where nobody ever told her she made them uncomfortable…

Darren Daxton scoffed as another ad for a fancy blender popped up in his web browser. What kind of moron did they take him for? $600 for a blender or $150, it was all a scam, a con job perpetrated by parasites trying to seize the money Darren had sweated and bled and sweated blood for. He checked his bank balance for the sixth time today. Yep, still at $379,008.49, after he had successfully disputed that 79-cent service charge. There was no way he could afford to go to that basketball game that his kids had bought him a ticket for, though. Parking downtown would be at least twelve dollars, and Darren was damned if he’d let those bloodsuckers gnaw a pound of flesh off his hide. Why, that would take his savings below $379,000! Just then, a woman approached. “Excuse me, sir,” the librarian said. “Your 30 minutes is up, and other patrons are waiting to use the computers…”