The Great Sandwich Maker

There once lived in a quiet, unassuming man in a quiet unassuming corner of the universe. Outwardly, there was nothing special about this man. The kind of man you’d pass by on the street and think “boy, that’s the kinda man you’d pass by on the street”. But, exactly like the billions of other people out there, he was completely different from everyone else. If there were two things that defined this man, they were sandwiches and marijuana. You see, our quiet unassuming man was a complete and utter pothead. But he also made the some of the best sandwiches ever known to humankind or any other kind. Sandwiches which have been variously described as “Utterly fantastical” and “The best thing since, well, sliced bread”. — But like with all great drug-addled artists, and let no qualms be made about that- this man was an artist, there was a catch. You see, he only made two sandwiches everyday. One for himself, and one for sale to the first person who asked to buy it. He would then proceed to use the money to buy himself some righteous mj and spend the rest of the day baked out of his head.

Now obviously, all this begs the question, why didn’t he flog his talents to a soul-less corporation for all it was worth and retire on the proceeds of the assembly line like any other self-respecting person would do?

Well, blame the drugs, blame the quiet, unassuming nature of his corner of the universe, but the blasted guy had gone and achieved a sort of inner peace, contentment, nirvana, the great up-above if you will. Normally people are all for this sort of thing. They queue up to listen to these people speak and spend crazy amounts of time convincing other people that they too should join the queue and so on, ad infinitum. Messiah types are usually well-loved, let alone a messiah who could craft the perfect ham and cheese. But the problem with our man was that he never spoke. Not much anyways. He wasn’t mute or anything, but stuff like “pass the salt” and “it looks like its about to rain” are hardly considered messiah worthy. In a perfect world, people would’ve realized he was a cut above your average Buddha because he didn’t feel the need to sit under trees bang on about how bloody enlightened he was. But obviously we don’t live in a perfect world and people didn’t realize that or anything resembling it. What they did instead was brand him a pretentious fuck. That’s right. The people, in their infinite wisdom, took probably the only man in the history of time to discover the answer to The question and not feel the need to lord it over everyone else, and branded him a hipster.

Now, one of the advantages of being enlightened is that you tend not to give a fuck about trivial things such as what people think. One of the disadvantages of being enlightened is that you also tend not to give a fuck about the machetes in their arms as they march towards you angrily. Self-realization’s a bitch that way. Asides aside, the people had decided that enough was enough and the time for action was upon them. And what do you do with a goose that lays golden eggs? Why, obviously you rip out its entrails, stick them on a mechanical framework and see if it still does its thing. As evil flash mobs go, this was a pitiful one, used as they were to the oft-referred-to quiet and unassuming nature of life where they lived. And it was no surprise that they failed in their rather lofty mission. You see, no one was really sure what the machetes they carried were for and the only methods of interrogation any of them seemed to know were “asking really nicely” and “with a cherry on top”.

In their quest to unearth the answers to the mysteries of our life or at least get a decent sandwich recipe out of the bargain, it appeared as though the people had failed miserably. But unbeknownst to them, they had actually succeed at a little. Or failed even more miserably. Depending on how you view the situation. You see, their feeble little inquest had produced one definite outcome. Depriving the man of his precious marijuana for a while and thus snapping probably the longest unbroken trip in the history of pot. On the one hand, this had the desirable effect of making him a little less enlightened and a little more stupid and human-like. But on the other, it also had the rather more undesirable effect of making his sandwiches decidedly average. Rather like every Subway 6-inch you’ve ever eaten.

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