STRATEGIES FOR GROWTH

I am buying a majority stake in a cup of coffee. That kid over there is buying a majority stake in a red velvet cupcake. The woman on the street is buying a majority stake in a bottle of pills that she has been promised by her doctor will control the pain from her recent procedure. The doctor is buying a majority stake in a boat that he plans to share with his son-in-law. The son-in-law is buying a majority stake in a week’s worth of services from a contract killer who he is enlisting to prematurely end the life of his father-in-law, largely as a result of monies that will then come to him and his wife but partly, too, because of the boat, and the way that his father-in-law condescendingly calls it a “fifty-fifty partnership,” even though everybody knows it’s more like ninety-ten in his favor, and the son-in-law knows there’s no shame in that, he’s only starting to get his nutriceuticals business underway, it’s going to take a while, everyone knows that, how can he compete with a thoracic surgeon who has had a thriving practice for decades, whose success comes off him like a cologne, who advertises even with the name of the boat, A Cut Above, but the lie of the even split irritates him because it is so transparent that is is always exposed immediately in a way that results in the son-in-law’s diminishment. The son-in-law’s wife, the doctor’s daughter, has no knowledge of the plot at all. She’s buying a majority stake in having no knowledge of the plot at all.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas