The Key to Bill (BILLS)

I am going through my true “Mid Life Cri­sis” at present.

It is the time of my life when I am fil­ing away the past and wash­ing it all away so I can step for­ward into the future into a “new” life with­out any bag­gage. (edit note 11 Novem­ber 2024 I am still going through that midlife cri­sis)

So it is a very reflec­tive time as my reg­u­lar read­ers may have guessed by the tone of some of my recent “Pieces.” So I do apol­o­gize if the blogs are a lit­tle weird.

The Con­tes­sa bought up a point yes­ter­day in my Melan­cholic 1984 Blog about peo­ple stand­ing on their soap­box­es com­plain­ing about the drugs and youth, not actu­al­ly look­ing around and see­ing the alco­holism around them.

Years ago, I was speak­ing to a big drug deal­er (lit­er­al­ly he weighed 400 pounds) «Obvi­ous­ly did­n’t par­take of his prod­ucts.

We were talk­ing about peo­ple and addic­tions. In the small fish­ing vil­lage I lived in at the time, I was sur­round­ed by alco­hol and drugs. Our lit­tle town was a dis­tri­b­u­tion point for the entire cor­ner of the state. And the guy I was talk­ing to was THE dis­trib­u­tor.

He was a “mate” of my ex, who he met through one of the abalone fish­er­man and this par­tic­u­lar day he “need­ed” me to help him on a pick up as I was the only one in the group that had a license. So we drove along with me try­ing to keep the car, which was lean­ing rather dan­ger­ous­ly heavy down on the left hand side, con­trolled and dri­ving straight on the road.

Every now and then in life some­one says some­thing to you that makes you sit up and lis­ten. And you car­ry that con­ver­sa­tion through in life. You learn some­thing from it. Scar­i­ly as it seems, Bill taught me a lot about peo­ple.
He turned to me and said “Mar­garet, every­one has a crutch in life. You find out what it is and that per­son is yours, they will do any­thing for that crutch.”

So sim­ple but yet so pro­found. That one lit­tle phi­los­o­phy is what I call to this day

“The Key To Bill.”

That sen­tence turned around in my head and around again. I began to open my eyes and real­ly look at what was going on around me. Bill was the “Can­dy­man” and I watched as his pock­ets seemed always to be filled with every­one’s favorite type of can­dy. I watched as his car boot was laden with box­es of black mar­ket abalone, the fresh­est buck­ets of sil­ver bream, bas­kets of still crawl­ing lake prawns and box­es and box­es of fresh gar­den veg­eta­bles and fruit. It was amaz­ing that with­out word or com­mand, he had an army of troops, run­ning around doing his bid­ding.

I began to watch oth­er peo­ple. I watched the group matri­arch sit upstairs of an evening with her earplug in her ear, eaves­drop­ping on the con­ver­sa­tion at the table in the den below, sip­ping away at bot­tle after bot­tle of white wine. Every now and then she would get up and go to a cup­board and take a pill from a box. (She is a whole sto­ry in her­self).

I would watch the fish­er­men jump off the boat after a few days at sea, get paid cash off the skip­per then lit­er­al­ly run to the Bay Hotel. Once they got there, that mon­ey would sit on the bar until it was all most­ly gone. The land­lords and wives would be wait­ing at the bar when the boats got in, ready to grab their share before that was gone too.

I watched as Trevor, the crew­man on Ray’s trawler, sat at the bar’s pok­er machines for hour upon hour, push­ing but­tons, smok­ing cig­a­rettes and drink­ing beer until his hand was to shaky to find the but­ton and his voice was that of a tod­dler.

I would watch the oth­er crew­man spend­ing it all on hors­es, or the dog races and foot­ball.

And I would watch Bill at the end of the bar, watch­ing them and watch­ing me watch­ing them, with a glass of lemon­ade in one hand and a meat pie in the oth­er. This was his busiest time but he did noth­ing but watch. No one both­ered him or came near him, yet every minute his pock­ets were fill­ing with hun­dreds of hun­dreds of dol­lars. He had “the broth­ers”, who were two of his lap­dog junkies, run­ning around the bar doing his dirty work in exchange for a piece of can­dy at the end of the night.

He was right. I have watched the world for the 15 years since he said that to me and he was right.

Whether it be an addic­tion crutch or base need.. .…

Every­one has some­thing that they rely on to get through. crWhether it is speak­ing to their best friend on the phone every day, a dozen cups of cof­fee, a game on the Wii, a beer at the pub, a gam­ble, a work­out at the gym, sex, love, Coke a cola, sug­ar, Tv, drugs and the list goes on.

If you take that away, the per­son will wal­low to get it back.

Con­trolled through addic­tions and base needs.

And it is used by soci­ety. Our addic­tions cost more. The gov­ern­ment uses our addic­tion to gain more tax mon­ey through gam­bling tax­es and alco­hol and cig­a­rette tax­es. Instead of the Gov­ern­ment fix­ing the prob­lem, they actu­al­ly aid to “water it” or make it grow. These addic­tions are used to con­trol peo­ple.

A note to the Gov­ern­ment here.

If Cig­a­rettes are as tox­ic as you make the com­pa­nies put on their labels then you have a duty of care to your peo­ple to ban the sale of this tox­ic sub­stance to be con­sumed by the peo­ple. After all you banned pot. As cig­a­rettes in “your own words” are HIGHLY ADDICTIVE, you have the respon­si­bil­i­ty as our cho­sen lead­ers to stop pro­duc­ing and mak­ing such mas­sive amounts od dol­lars off this prac­tice of addic­tion, mis­ery, poi­son and death.

These addic­tions are fod­der for peo­ple with bad intent. The teens of today are con­stant­ly being tar­get­ed through their “crutch­es” by mas­sive mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. The can­dy­man is con­stant­ly dan­gling a bag of good­ies in front of soci­ety all over.

Addic­tions to tech­nol­o­gy, keep­ing up with the Jones’s, the lat­est and great­est in Video Games and week­end play toys, are played on and pushed towards peo­ple on a mas­sive degree. It is one big mar­ket­ing machines tar­get­ing your weak­ness­es.

If some­thing proves to be a “must have” addic­tion, the price goes up. Mat­ters not because peo­ple “want it” and they will buy it. They may com­plain a lit­tle but still put their hands in their pock­ets.

Basic needs can be the tar­get…

The price of fuel ris­es, you need it, you have to have it, so you pay for it but noth­ing extra is com­ing into your pock­et to cov­er it. The price of tobac­co or wine ris­es, you pay it. Elec­tric­i­ty even, yes can you do with­out it? The price ris­es by 17 per­cent in six months but you don’t blink, you pay it.

Imag­ine if you were told one morn­ing no more phones, no more com­put­er, or no more elec­tric­i­ty, no more cof­fee.. and you were cut off from that one thing.. How would you feel?
The Plug Pulled?

Peo­ple feed off oth­er peo­ples needs and weak­ness­es. The com­pa­nies and drug deal­ers get rich­er and rich­er and the peo­ple get more and more reliant on them to dish out the can­dy.