Fred Aiken Writing

October 31, 2022

Coupon Cuts

I cut another coupon.

I don’t know how much I’ve saved this year. How much I’ve saved my entire life.

If I had to guess, it would probably be in the six figures. Maybe more. I suppose the one regret I have is that I didn’t take stock how much I saved cutting coupons. I should have started in my twenties. I should have started when I was a teenager. I should have started when my mom asked if I wanted to go to the store with her in grade school and handed me the coupon book filled with page after page of coupons from a wide array of newspaper clippings.

Oh well. Life isn’t a sale on spoiled milk.

There’s quite a few things on sale this week. The key, though, is to find the sales that directly apply to me. If I were to just cut every coupon willy-nilly and buy everything in the coupon book, then I would be wasting more than I was saving. That’s one of those lessons I had to learn the hard way.

Too many years spent never passing on a “deal”. But I was the sucker. I became the product, and it felt like the coupons were cutting me more than I them.

When I finished cutting my coupons for the week, I carefully go over them as if they are a religious artifact that could change form at any minute. I etch out a carefully laid plan of attack. It details everything I will cook and eat for the week, with a few modifications just in case things don’t go to plan. Then I compose a grocery list that chronicles the path I will take when I arrive at the store.

Every aisle, every corner, every department, chosen and predetermined to make my grocery run as efficient and painless as possible.

When I finish shopping and stand before the gatekeeper of groceries, aka, the cashier, I will present to them my carefully manicured clippings of astroparchment savings stacked neatly in my wallet. And I will watch, bask, as the price of my wares steadily tumbles. And I will be satisfied.

October 31, 2022

Typed Out Plan Gone Awry

A group of well-meaning, or perhaps well-dressed though ill-mannered, yet still well-intentioned, group of men approached an undisclosed building with yet-to-be-continued content of materials and people inside.

“So, what’s the plan?”

    “What plan?”

    “The plan. You know, what are we about to do?”

    “Oh yeah, I…have no idea.”

    “That’s not a plan.”

    “I never meant for it to be taken as such.”

    “So you’re saying we don’t have a plan?”

    “I’m saying there neither is nor isn’t a plan.”

    “What if something goes wrong?”

    “Then we’ll adjust.”

    “So there is a plan.”

    “Stop suggesting there’s a plan. We’ll go in, do our thing—”

    “What’s our thing?”

    “The thing we always do. I’m not your babysitter. If you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing when those doors open, then well, there’s a lot more problems than whether or not we have a plan.”

    He went rouge. He felt embarrassed, but was too embarrassed to say so. Instead, he shut up, followed everyone else’s lead, and kept to the back.

    “What are you doing?”

    “Just going along.”

    “You’re supposed to lead the way.”

    “I feel like we can adjust that part of the plan.”

    “THERE IS NO PLAN!”

    The lights to the building jumped. A rustle surged through the walls and out into the cold night air. Something, or someone, stirred inside.

    The men bolted and wondered if this was what they intended all along.