I’m a bit embarrassed to tell you that I recently placed an order for a new pair of walking shoes at a cost of nearly one hundred and fifty dollars. The pair advertised itself as having some supernatural foam that would provide superior cushioning should I decide to jump out of a tree or have my feet pressure washed. I was also impressed by some other highly technical features, each having their own patent, indicated by an indecipherable Aztec symbol next to them. Shoes, like everything else in the world, have become highly sophisticated and expensive, which often leaves me being picky, if not spoiled, when it comes to what I think I must have.
Growing up I had two choices for breakfast. I had Kellogg’s Special K and Cornflakes. Then Wheaties came along, and breakfast choices got a bit trickier. Every month the cereal box came with a new athlete adorning the box cover, with people like Muhammed Ali, Chris Evert Lloyd and Tommie Smith. In the fall, Bart Starr from the Green Bay Packers showed up on the box cover, just in time for me to get fitted for cleats, and then in the spring Bruce Jenner was pictured throwing what I took to be an Apache spear on the Wheaties cover. There was no way I was going to eat Special K or Cornflakes when I could eat a cereal that helped me throw a football with a perfect spiral or heave a spear across the greater Midwest basin. Nowadays, there is an entire aisle in the grocery store dedicated to just cereal, and in one store I was in recently, you could even mix your own. If I would have known that when I was nine years old, I would have left out the raisins, which always sunk to the bottom anyway where they lay like gravel trying to re-hydrate themselves.
When I think of how specialized we all have become, how individualized, I’m easily impressed by someone who orders their coffee black, or a guy that still drives a stick shift. However, in other parts of the world right now, in the Ukraine for example, people don’t have the time or the energy to be impressed by anything. They are just thankful for a day when a tank isn’t rolling down what is left of their street. While no one is asking me point blank to become a martyr for their cause and give up my fancy walking shoes for the war, I can and should be more aware when my mac and cheese isn’t my Stouffer’s favorite, or when my Netflix series goes on the fritz in the middle of season five.
We see the effects of what happens when a pinguid autocrat like Putin becomes engorged on his own favorite recipes. In the war he started with Ukraine, he is like a spoiled child who can’t have his favorite meal all the time and begins to throw his considerable weight around. Now, Putin, representing the Russian people, has thrown what amounts to a military temper tantrum and will continue to create a devastating wake of destruction until he gets the meal he wants, at the cost of Ukrainian sovereignty and lives. Like a child, he can no longer see the weight of his selfishness, greed or inhumanity because his own totalitarian belly is in the way. Meanwhile, there are reports that Russian soldiers shoot themselves in the leg so they don’t have to fight, which closely resembles the metaphor for shooting oneself in the foot.
I remember complaining once about a meal my mom made, a ham loaf as I recall. I did not spend the rest of the evening pouting or banging my silverware on the table until I got the meal I wanted. Instead, I was summarily sent away from the table with no supper at all. My parents were not going to allow me to grow up and demand that every meal be my favorite. They loved me way too much to watch a spoiled kid grow up to be a tyrant that walked out in the world and took whatever he wanted whenever the mood struck. They were very wise and knew the consequences of letting an apparent little thing grow into a monster, the little thing being me.
The entire world has lost its appetite for violence. We sicken over the horrific pictures filing past us and have lost our appetites for those sitting at the table pushing their proverbial weight around. It is up to us in small ways to stop people who do this, and it is up to the global community in a big way to send Putin back to his room until he remembers his manners.