A mild mannered, elderly gentleman, worked for many years to open his own shop. From childhood he had held a fascination with fine china. When finally, well into middle age, he had amassed enough savings, the man purchased a little shop with big glass windows and filled it with china and other fine goods to sell. The shop had been his pride and joy now for twenty years.
It was a day like any other when the bull walked into the china shop, lumbering up and down the aisles, knocking over merchandise at every turn and in between. He did not know the difference between a crystal vase and a water glass, between a sugar spoon and a dessert spoon, between a butter knife and a cake knife. They all fell to the ground with similar consequence. The metals clattered and the finer wares shattered.
Presently the bull careened into the counter-top and paused. He reared up and revealed that he held the shape not of a bull, but of a man - a bull man. The bull man looked directly into the eyes of the china shop owner, who stood behind the counter, and he said "Nice shop, but a little messy."
A LITTLE MESSY! The china shop owner dared not speak. He simply smiled meekly and nodded in agreement. How the shop had become messy did not negate the fact that it now was indeed a mess.
By now a crowd had gathered outside, and they were all staring on through the shop window. Some were furiously taking notes, while others filmed the exchange on their smartphones and cameras. One mustachioed man held a cardboard banner that read "PLASTIC-WARE BEATS CHINA!" Footage of him would surely go viral on social media. An official PBC movement was already underway.
At that moment, something caught the eye of the bull man. He reached down into a pile of fine china, where a tea pot and a gravy boat had both shattered together. The bull man picked up a shard of shattered china and held it up in front of himself. "Shame. Too bad so much of your stuff is broken. I might have bought this. My wife would have loved this gravy boat."
The shard, of course, had come from the tea pot. The shop owner was an expert on fine china, and so of course he could see the disparity. But most of the onlookers were not experts on china, and so they took the bull man at his word. Some of the late comers even nodded, "Too bad."
"Why," as the word stuttered out of his mouth, the shop owner could hardly believe he was speaking, "Why did you come here?"
The bull man stared at the shop owner, as if confronted by the innocent inquiries of a child, as if he were being asked to explain the pigmentation of the sky. "Well of course, I am here because I love china."
"Oh." It was such an inexplicable response that the shop owner could not fathom what else to say. Surely most people who entered a china shop did so because they liked china. But it was also true that most people did not choose to destroy those things which they claimed to admire. What was the appropriate response wondered the shop owner. "Thank you for coming?"
"My pleasure," exclaimed the bull man. "We're going to fix this for you. We're going to make china great again."
"Huh?"
"I'm going to put a tariff on all imports of china from China so that you can rebuild your shop with American china."
"American china?"
The bull man reached out and slapped his hand down on the shoulder of the shop owner. "Glad to have you on board." And with that, the bull man turned and strode out of the shop, the sound of china crunching under hoof.
Deep in his soul the shop owner felt something gurgling, something he could not define and had never felt before. His blood felt hot. He dared not confront the feelings, lest they overwhelm him. Something had happened to him, to his shop, and there was no going back to change it now.
The shop owner's first instinct was to go to the supply closet and grab the broom, but then he paused. The insurance company would want him to document the damage. He set down the broom and picked up his phone.
The line rang a few times before the shop owner was transferred into an automated answering system. He patiently navigated the menu options until he reached the option to speak to a person. After fifteen minutes on hold, a claims person answered, and asked for information to verify the identity of the shop owner. At long last, the shop owner was given the opportunity to explain his claim.
The claims person was pleasant and understanding. "Don't worry," she said, "we handle insurance for a lot of shops in your neighborhood."
The china shop owner looked out the window. There was a crowd gathered now outside the barber shop. "I better get my claim in quick," he thought.
