Once...

Once upon a time there was an angry, chompy beastie that lived in an old Cheerio box behind a 7-11. Every couple of days, the person who owned the 7-11 tried to throw the Cheerio box away because it was cluttering up the alley.

Every couple of days, the person who owned the 7-11 lost a lot of blood.

This went on for months. The 7-11 owner would try to get rid of the Cheerio box, and the angry, chompy beastie would be angry and chompy, and the owner would have to go to the Red Cross for a transfusion. The Cheerio box being, as it was, made of cardboard, got more and more dilapidated as time passed. When it rained, the box got squishy. When it was windy, little bits of the box flew away. When it was hot, the box went all crispy and wrinkly. And, as if the box wasn’t enough of an eyesore, the angry chompy beastie was more of a one. It had one eye, was missing a big chunk of one ear, had a big, mean, snaggletoothed grin, and its body was gnarled like a swamp tree in a Saturday morning kid’s cartoon about a group of nosy teenagers and their talking dog.

The longer the war between the 7-11 owner and the beastie went on, the more the 7-11 owner realized that they were shit out of luck on the winning front. That beastie and its scraggly Cheerio box weren’t-a goin’ nowhere, no-how. Eventually, the 7-11 owner simply threw up their hands, chalked it up to experience, and left the beastie and its box to its gnarly, angry, chompy self. This solution worked for a while. The beastie would only snarl at the 7-11 owner when they came out to throw something in the dumpster, the 7-11 owner would give the beastie some serious side-eye, and the people at the Red Cross got so concerned that the 7-11 owner wasn’t coming in regularly anymore that they sent someone to check on them--and bring Slurpees back for the office, of course. It was a 7-11, after all.

So, there was a silent agreement, a tenuous cease-fire, an uneasy peace. All was quiet in the Convenience Store Kingdom.

At least it was until the beastie’s Cheerio box got so old and weatherbeaten that the beastie was reduced to wearing the last, sad cardboard box flap as a hat to try to protect itself from the elements.

One stormy afternoon, the 7-11 owner dropped a sack of garbage outside the back door of the store with the intention of walking it to the dumpster when the rain let up, but stopped at the sight of the beastie and its sad box-flap hat, standing where the Cheerio box once stood, soaking wet and shivering.

The beastie snarled, as was the custom.

The 7-11 owner threw shade at the beastie, as was the custom.

But once the owner was back inside, the timer went off on the hot dogs on the rollers, indicating that it was time to throw the current batch out and start a fresh one, and the 7-11 owner felt a pang of guilt. The beastie was their neighbor, regardless of its violent nature and sour attitude. The beastie--their neighbor--was wet. And probably cold. And maybe hungry as well. So the 7-11 owner put the old hot dogs in a cardboard nacho tray and walked back out the back door.

The beastie snarled, as was the custom.

The 7-11 owner then did something different. Defying custom, they put the tray on the ground and pushed it toward the beastie with a broom.

The beastie attacked the broom on principle, but the owner could tell that the beastie’s heart wasn’t in it. Then the beastie snarfed down all the hot dogs, gave the owner a slow blink, adjusted its box-flap hat, and went back to its spot on the pavement.

That night, the owner collapsed all the cardboard boxes from the day’s deliveries but one, which they left outside the back door.

The next morning, the beastie had moved the box to its favored spot, and there was a pile of very dead cockroaches--a pest the 7-11 owner struggled with on a regular basis-- neatly stacked next to the dumpster, ready to be discarded.

The beastie still snarled at the 7-11 owner.

The 7-11 owner still glowered right back at it.

But the too-old hot dogs, and every so often a new box, were always offered up. It was as if the 7-11 owner was saying, “We’re different, but you are my neighbor, and even though we don’t get along, I will not allow you to suffer unnecessarily.”

The piles of dead roaches continued to appear every morning. It was as if the beastie was saying, “We’re different, but you are my neighbor, and even though we don’t get along, I will not allow you to suffer unnecessarily.”

Moral: You can’t change others, or how they behave toward you, but you can change how you behave toward them, and that might make a world of difference.

Maybe it’s time to give your beasties a fresh box.