A long awaited phonecall

Yesterday evening I received a call on my cellular phone from SK of KC. My voice could not contain its excitement ... to the extent that I think she may have been surprised by the effusive "Helloooooooooooooo!" that flew at her. We chatted briefly and I explained my mission (to find out the story behind the minty messages and see where the whole thing could lead). She was very pleasant, sounded genuinely interested and told me that she would discuss it with the CEO and get back to me.

In the meantime ... the following KC interview (transcribed from dictaphone) took place recently on the edges of the ravaged 1,000 acres of Union Village which were cleared for the proposed aluminium smelter. The interviewee, David, is a fellow Trini who does not support the construction of aluminium smelters on our island.

David holds up the wrapper of the KC mint he selected from the bag

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Elspeth: What memories do you get from these mints?

David: Mints? Well ... pleasant and soothing effect.

Elspeth: Not the mint itself, but the messages. Do you ever look at the messages you get on the thing?

D: Yeah ... romantic, passionate, affectionate .. in terms of good relations with yourself and people. Mannerliness. These are the messages I get.

E: What's the message you got there?

D: It pertains to me. Stay sweet and kind. I love you. Very simple, very powerful in terms of ... I try to be gentle, simple ... and I mean, I'm very loving. So I enjoy reading this and in between of course I'm sucking the mint.

E: Do you give those messages to people or did you ever get one from anybody?

D: Well when this now came out with the messages on the mints ... before, it wasn't so ... yes I used to for the fun of it give somebody and you hope you get something, you know ... strong or real and truthful ... about yourself or about the person.

E: And do you find that they are real ... or what's your impression of it? I know you said it was simple, but ...

D: Yeah, it's real. A lot of people aspire to have some affection. They aspire to be called loving or ... and as well as to be called sweet ... the niceties of good relations with people. So it's real.

E: Who do you think wrote those messages? You ever thought about that?
D: Well I don't think it came from any one particular person as such. Anybody can make up these things. And as I said ... all these messages are within us. All of us may not always be able to expres it, but it's simple, as I said ... and you can express it by actions more so than by words sometimes.

E: If you had the opportunity to put a message on one of those wrappers what would it be?

D: It would be so much ... but ... what can I say ... ahmmm ... in a nutshell, you could simply say ... mmmmm (sucking mint as he thinks) ... I could simply say Keep on sucking for all the pleasantries ... or something. I could think of other things, but I'm on the spot now so you'll have to check me back on that.

E: So that's it! Thanks.

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Elspeth