Storytime

We’ve made a few friends here by now, among them Nikhil and Supurna (I’m sure I’m spelling their names wrong…). He’s a director and she started an organization that helps provide counseling to kids in government custody – good people, and capable of holding conversations with a sense of humor even at the most actor and model filled camera flashing events. Nice dog, too. They had a party recently where I talked for awhile with a writer I’d met a few times before. He told me a story about a friend of his that was so good I had to ask permission to share it. Here goes:
It seems that his friend has an eye for business ventures. This was just after the tamagotchi craze had started and people all over the world were buying the little things up for good money. Taiwan started making them cheaper, and he decided to get in on the action and brought a few thousand over to sell in India. He was a little uncertain about the quality of the Taiwanese knock-offs, and wanting to sell a good product, so he went through and turned them all on to test them. Very honorable… only, as anyone familiar with tamagotchi knows, once they are turned on they are ‘alive’ and need to be fed and cared for like real pets. Especially for the first part of their lives. They even get mean if you don't play with them. His family and friends and extended network of family and friends spent the next week frantically trying to feed and bathe and care for these thousands of needy plastic baby beings – the dashboard of his car was covered with hundreds all needing food or water or attention or cleaning. Everywhere, crying tamagotchi that he couldn’t sell in time - even if he could spare the time from caring for them. It was a massacre of desperate, unintentional neglect. They all died.
I’m not sure what the moral of the story is but DAMN that cracked me up.