How condoms helped me develop a gritty mindset

Have you ever noticed how some foods just don’t go well together? Or some clothes just don’t pair very well?

I have found that everything has it’s place and every place has it’s thing.

In fact I discovered an incredible hack one time, which monumentally reduced my stress levels, saved time and panic. Place your keys in the same place at home or in your bag. Place your tea cup in the same place (or selected places within each room at home), so you don’t spend 10 mins looking for it, by which time it has gone cold. The same lessons apply for your phone, paperwork, water, glasses, books etc etc. You’re welcome.

Being raised in a rough violent neighbourhood

I was raised in a rough council estate in Basingstoke UK. Think grey/brown toned low-rise flats, housing a population at the lower end of the socio-economical scale. Think families on government benefits, think right-wing gangs, think drunkards, think violence, think intimidation, think white-supremacy power, think one-brown-family-caught-amongst-all-the-above. And breathe.

My folks were highly educated (Dad was a qualified Chemical Engineer who studied at Leeds University UK and Mum was an international hockey player who represented India, as well as having a string of degrees to her name). Somehow they found themselves owning a shop, in a shit-hole part of Southern England (name me one Basingstoke fan, anyone, please!).

Not-so-friendly Britain

Anyhow, very soon after arriving in the UK circa 50 years ago, my mum quickly discovered that a pile of poo was more noteworthy than her name, fame and Indian degrees (more on this in another blog).

So what are highly educated (yet rejected) immigrants to do, when trying to settle in a country, feed their off-spring and make ends meet? Start a business of course.

“Let’s open a supermarket, sell essentials and randoms, slap bang opposite a pub full of piss-heads, in a super racist neighbourhood, and raise our 3 British-born off-springs, in this wonderful welcoming country called England” Said no-one.

OK OK, so my parents certainly couldn’t have known the extent to what they were signing up for, when they did take over the shop. The shop represented a business, which represented freedom from oppression (Indians, Chinese, Africans and all shades ranging from latte through to espresso on the pantone chart, were highly discriminated against, oppressed and hated upon).

This meant the shit jobs were preserved for the immigrants (anyone sense a common theme worldwide here?), opportunities to rise were thwarted with unnecessary hurdles placed by the haters. It would have been easier to do a Michael Jackson and go through whatever surgery he did to convert from black to white. But of course that would have cost a lot of money, and pain and was not practical nor desired. Perhaps it would have been easier for the racist white folk to just be accepting……perhaps?

So my folks ran the shop, without any business experience, and without any tools or defences to deal with the daily hate (they would discover resilience and grit on the job, as would I).

One day, as mum went about stocking the frozen section with pizzas, chips (and other crap processed frozen produce that the UK flamboyantly markets, to feed it’s nation), she discovered a deflated balloon.

Oh wait

It wasn’t a balloon

What is this?

Oh

It’s a condom

Someone has placed a condom amongst the peas. How very considerate of our friendly neighbours.

Condoms and peas

The problem with finding condoms amongst frozen food is that it can become a game of hide and seek. And a condom by nature is highly malleable, so it can be squeezed into the tiniest of gaps. So frequent was the ‘condom hiding’ incident, that my parents would do a ‘sweep’ of the freezers to pick out the undesired foreign objects before daytime trading started. It’s just not the kind of thing that draws the punters in.

Of course the condom-planters became more creative, and would shift their positioning, so the soggy rubber could be found literally anywhere, on any shelf, amongst the eggs, or the cakes, or the tinned foods. Hiding condoms amongst the tin food was genius, since you could slot it behind the tins at the back, and it would escape unnoticed until a customer would eventually complain.

Thank goodness there was no such thing as Google star ratings, Facebook reviews or Medium ‘claps’ in those days, I hate to think how our little shop would have scored.

Sometimes the condoms were unused and still shiny and new from the packet. Finding these condoms was a happy (and clean) moment. Other times, our friendly neighbours weren’t so kind, and would ensure they got their monies worth from their condoms first (at least they were practicing safe sex), and kept their mementos only to later deposit them in our freezer. That’s one way to freeze sperm I suppose.

Once they got so bored with their condom-planting tricks, they decided to bring their spermy remnants to our very front door, and posted it through our letter box (more on that story another day).

Anyhow, as with most acts of hate, eventually this gimmick died down (perhaps the condom manufacturers raised their prices, which made it uneconomical to waste the rubber on the 'Pakis' down the road). Who knows, but eventually the haters would move onto the next creative act.

Creative hatred

When I think about these incidents, I’m intrigued with the creativeness of it. I mean seriously, who dreams this stuff up? And when I consider the psychology of someone who hates someone so much because they look different, I’m led down a rabbit warren of question marks. But as a wise person once said, “hurt people, hurt people”.

So here’s what I learnt as a young girl that I still practice till this very day (and impart to my 2 young children) :

“Everything has it’s place, and every place has it’s thing”

Condoms don’t belong in freezers, they belong on a penis.

And for the racist haters out there, I guess they need to decide if their penis is indeed in it’s correct place, or if it happens to be growing on their head!

Written by Dee Allan- The Gritty Girl, International Speaker, Writer and Entrepreneur.