Help us Veggie Box, you’re our only hope…
Those of you who have tuned into Netflix’s Big Mouth series will be familiar with the character of Andrew and his bout of Poop Madness. Stuck at summer camp — without the comfort of a familiar toilet and limited to constipating camp food, Andrew is unable to relieve his bowels for weeks. Eventually, his fecal matter seeps into his brain and he starts to go crazy — showing symptoms of the aforementioned poop madness.
Andrew’s story is a great segue into asking ourselves questions about the people that lockdown made us. What do we consume that slowly builds inside us to contribute to a sense of madness, and what can we do to slowly correct the effects of such practices?
Fortunately, the quest to find an answer starts at a mutual point of departure, both for me and anyone suffering from crippling constipation. Fresh fruit and vegetables. In my case, I am referring to the deliveries of fresh produce we would receive on Thursday afternoons from our local market through lockdown.
What’s the Poop?
Online shopping has truly come into its own through this whole episode. While we were locked down and locked out of stores, the internet has given our credit cards a through-road to newer and shinier things. As a population, we have bought new track pants, alcohol, exercise equipment, and anything else that falls between those fundamental categories.
While it has liberated our credit, this gateway hasn’t necessarily caused us to spend more money. Not only were any of us able to spend any money ‘out’, but we were making more informed decisions as consumers. Online shopping offers you the jumbled up world of knowledge that is the internet at your fingertips. Find out the best brands, the best products and the best prices. Read reviews, hunt for relevant sales, and maximise the most rewarding memberships. As a couple with no dependents, time and patients to research rewarded us with savings, ethical choices and consumer wisdom.
In many ways, the vice of online shopping reminds us that lockdown was not at all a slowdown. We are used to feeling busy and stimulated. Our desire to be stimulated and discover new things was not paused or slowed down — we just redirected it towards the limitlessness of the internet. And for shopping, this meant diving rabbit-hole-deep into making the best possible decisions.
When my partner and I first emerged from our cave and explored retail shops again, the pleasure of seeing clothes in the flesh quickly subsided when we realised we were without our sixth sense — the ability to have 10 tabs open at a time and compare options. We were offered colours, textures and stitching quality. We could feel clothes against our skin, and see how they sat on people that weren’t models. However, as the garments prostrated themselves before us, it was this aforementioned sixth sense for which we were longing, to help us make informed decisions.
Herein lies the poop. Having been locked out of retail, we were unable to use our senses of touch, smell and sight to make good decisions. We then replaced all of these senses with a world of retail-info; brands, reviews, images, comparisons, sales etc. And over time, we came to value this blunting sense of collated data over all of our other senses, if not at the expense of them. Poop madness.
Gandalf the White Cabbage
Similarly to Gandalf the white — emerging from over the hill when he was needed most, our weekly fresh produce box delivery was a moment of pure joy and exasperation. We never knew what would be in the box each week, just that it was a very wide range of seasonal produce. We were also reassured that it was — reasonably — good value, because it always featured a few hilariously ugly veggies. (Aren’t we all glad they found a home.)
Alas, the antidote to our poop madness. The quality of the produce in our boxes each week would overload all of our senses and fight off the dreaded sixth sense. Something wonderful would arrive at our door — something that we welcomed into our home and our fridge with affirming joy. The fact that we didn’t make an informed and measured decision about each and every detail — and yet we were happy — was incredibly liberating. Praise be the veggie box!
Should we be Worried About the Symptoms of Long Poop Madness?
No, but not without some effort and responsibility. Without trying to sound like a fiscally-minded politician, we need to get back into shops. While I’m [a bit of] a Marxist — I’d call myself a champagne socialist if I didn’t prefer beer and gin, unfortunately the corporate machine provides jobs and salaries, and we can’t transcend capitalism until it’s properly up and running again.
Over time, my partner and I rediscovered that shopping in the wild has its perks. The human interaction is mostly great — more often than not you walk away happy enough from a retail exchange. But what was really clear was that a year of a blunting, sixth sense, moulds people who might find themselves stuck in a routine, venturing on stale. Only once we were back in a shop, with all of our senses firing again, were we able to feel confident to try something new.
Ultimately, our poop madness, much like Andrew’s entire body, had become stale. Our track pants weren’t trailblazing, and our comfy-jumpers will never see the light outside of our home. But we are humans, and we long to exist outside of our apartment — especially after such a long period locked up inside.
Consumerism is not the answer to a happier 2021, but how we reintegrate into the external world is not a process we should undertake without awareness. With all that said and done, I will forever remember the feeling of opening up our veggie box on Thursday evenings, like a child giddily unwrapping a birthday present and only being happy with what they find.