Free Gifts and Free Stuff

Free Gifts and Free Stuff ©

By

Michael Casey

Well I’ve been to the doctor and I weighed myself while I was there, I am 116kilos clothed. Or 255pounds, I think, if you are American, which is over 18 stones if you are in England. But I look 25 kilos lighter, which is the weight of a suitcase. So now you have the figure you can ogle at my manly figure, just imagine how much lighter I’d look if I were naked. Ok, you can all go puke in a bucket, but somebody somewhere might be excited by the prospect, maybe the Korean girl who works in the mortuary.

I got an unexpected letter in the post, it was seeds for my English Country Garden, ok for the front garden outside. So I’ve poked the seeds in, hoping they will actually grow, Chinese Poeny or is it Pony, either way manure, pony or otherwise will help things grow. A splash of colour before you enter the house and smile to the wifi security camera, I love watching myself on it afterwards.

I was tidying up the packaging when I discovered a free gift at the bottom of the envelope. A tiny packet of safflower seeds. I googled safflower and did not like the thistle like leaves, so I planted them right at the bottom of the back garden by the back fence. If they grow they will hide the garden fence and add a splash of colour. They come in 3 colours. You can go google for yourself. Hopefully in time the back garden fence will totally disappear behind a colourful bush.

So that was a free gift today, though normally when you get something free it is just tat. Worth £40 it says, but really it’s worth a fiver from the market back in Shanghai or HK. The idea is to boast that the marketing company loves you, and they are doing you a favour. They are not. There was a glut of this or that, so they paid £2 for them by buying in bulk, and they know they could not actually sell them in the West, but they are perfect “free gifts” so you sign on for Life Insurance for the over 95s and you get a free gift, worth £40, or so they tell you.

I’ve just had a beef and tomato sandwich on wholemeal bread with Heinz salad cream on top, no Subway does not deliver, I went to the kitchen to top up on my free water, the doctor said my kidneys were dry, so I’ll drink more water. Words are free too that’s why I use so many and you all get the benefit of my free words, well have any of you actually paid for one of my 17 books? So my words are free.

One nice thing did happen in the kitchen, I found my shades lurking on the floor under the spare kitchen chair by the dustbin. They have been lost a few days, so I feel victoriously now that I have them back. It’s like a free gift, the return of my best shades. They are Tommy Hilfiger’s I got them in Malta on the way home in 2013, my last ever holiday that was. So they encapsulate my holiday memories, before Arthritis and everything else came to hurt me.  

How do you feel when you hear the word free? Are you excited, or do you say where is the catch? When we are young we are happy, like a child, but as age advances we are more and more cynical. Love should be free, but it does cost, wait till you have the expense of children, not just the cost in money terms but in your tattered emotions as the kids grow. Free Love might be fun, sex on a beach, or in a wardrobe, or anyplace else, but there are consequences. You should have done this, you should have done that. But neither of you did this or that, you were too busy doing the other.

So the free gift is a baby. You can’t send it back, or push it back up the metaphorical letterbox, you have to deal with it. You made your bed, now you have to lie in it, if you stuck to the top of the wardrobe maybe this free gift would not arrive. Now you have a lifetime of a free gift that’ll steal everything from you, body and soul and car keys and house itself.

Then they leave home, and you are all alone. Hopefully they come to visit,not just to borrow. Hopefully wifi keeps you together, you no longer have to switch it off, you just hope it is on so they can talk from Brazil or Shanghai or even from the space station. Your son or daughter follows in your footsteps, they get to space, the first astronaut in the family, and meet this beautiful Russian cosmonaut. Then Nature takes its course, forget the high wardrobe with its view of the bed to dive on. A first for Mankind, the first coupling in space, your grandchild is out of this world, literally, created in space, a union of East and West. Now that is the perfect free gift, Love should unite both halves of the world, for Love is more than a free gift it is Priceless.