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Short-sighted against big oil and grocery kings

September 10, 2026   ·   0 Comments

by James Matthews

“Have you heard what’s the latest social havoc?”

Harold, who usually meets me at the bench. I swear he times it. Harold isn’t his name. That’s just how I refer to him in my internal dialogue.

I take walks when the walls start to close in, and the din of chatter in and out of my head becomes cacophonous. I sit at a bench along the main drag in the town where I live. More often than not, I meet up with Harold at some point.

“Something called the Door Kick Challenge,” he said.

What’s that now?

“I’d heard about it from the kids,” he said.

He said it was one of those social media trends going around like a start-of-school stomach virus. The Door Kick Challenge is when one person heaves a heavy-booted foot at a door at night while another person records it for social media. It scare-wakes the people inside, stirring fear and panic as the knuckleheads run off.

I don’t have any social media, but I looked into it afterwards. The trend is also called Donkey Kick Doors or Donkey Door Kicks. Something. And it happens in the late evening or very early in the morning.

“Imagine,” he said. “You’re just done with the toothbrush, the dishwasher is humming downstairs, and you’re pulling the blankets up to your chin. That kick in the dark is how your day ends.”

Or how the day starts, I said. You’re tucked into the bunk, listening after the big thump to hear if somebody’s broken into the place. The wife would be livid, I said. They’d have a little Irish blonde woman looking to tear a strip off somebody.

“Neighbour across the street is installing exterior lights with sensors,” Harold said.

Bit drastic, I said. Kids arsing around, that’s all. I told him about some of the antics of me and my buddies. Raiding apple trees, people’s backyard berry patches, throwing snowballs at taxis to get them to chase us, I said.

“A different time,” Harold said. “Exterior lighting isn’t drastic at all with the marauding social media followers and the raccoons.”

Hardly marauders, I said. Let’s not lose our heads in all of it. And I asked him about the raccoons.

“Working thumbs and problem-solving brains,” Harold said. “I can’t get a compost bin with a mechanism the raccoons can’t figure out. They’re not far from conspiring.”

I’m pretty certain Harold is harmless.

Gaggles of people had been walking by us since we started talking. One of the nearby stores sells used books. A young woman who works there had been placing books for sale in some of those plastic milk crates arranged along a piece of the sidewalk. Her movement had stuttered a bit. Perhaps she caught wind of Harold’s raccoon theory and was deciding if she’d actually heard what she thought he’d said. Maybe she was less certain of Harold’s harmlessness.

Harold sat next to me on the bench. He usually stands and smokes a cigarette or sips a coffee while we wag chins. But he said money had gotten tight and the vices were out.

“Certain concessions have to be made for present economic uncertainty,” Harold said. “The oil companies, the grifting wealthy, and the grocery kings are grinding us all down.”

Nothing we can do, I said. The way of the world and all that.

He fished his wallet from his pocket and opened it. He looked inside, and his face changed as if it brightened.

I asked him if he was okay.

“I’m going to be just fine,” he said and plucked a folded lottery ticket from his wallet. “Been hanging onto this. If I cash it now before things get too hard it’ll end up wasted, so I’ve hung onto it.”

He unfolded it and showed me its face. I said, You know they’re only good a year from the draw date, right? And then the light went from his eyes.

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