neighbors

Like a clumsy cat jumping onto a piano, their idea of the neighboring country was both surprising and awkward.  Their country was a shade of marigold on the large dusty maps that inhabited the libraries and elementary schools around the urban areas.  The neighbors were an ugly gray-green color; the shape and shade both mocked a chip of lead paint that surely coated all of the dilapidated factories that pock-marked the countryside.  People in the yellow country thought that people in the gray-green country didn't know how to download things, or how to use navigation systems in their SUVS.  They assumed that the gray-green people didn't even have SUVS at all.  Their feelings of superiority were only boosted by their recent theft of the gray-green country's culinary advancements.  People in the yellow country would cook on their large gas stoves and bake things in convection ovens, only now, they began to use the food that grew and ran wildly within their own country.  The flora and fauna of the yellow country was almost identical to that of the gray-green country; after all, they were neighbors and shared a long border.  The gray-green country had not become advanced enough to pay massive sums of money to import food and goods from other countries; they realized that they had a wonderful and bountiful land, and couldn't understand why someone would pay so much money for an apple from the other side of the world when there were beautiful, fresh, crispy apples dangling from the namesake tree just outside their door.  The yellow country took these ideas of using the local ingredients in cooking, and then elaborated on it.  They began to make large quantities of the local food, and then pack the meals in large clear bags, after which they would take a vacuum and suck all of the air out of the plastic.  Then, each meal would be place in a box with a nice picture on the front of a yellow-country person eating the food inside and smiling while eating.  One of the boxes that was produced showed an older woman smiling with a piece of spinach in her mouth.  Somehow it wasn't caught before mass-production began, and all of the woman's friends poked fun at her until she couldn't take it anymore and moved to the gray-green country.  No one in the gray-green country had ever seen a box with food inside that was already prepared, so the woman didn't feel self conscious anymore when she ate spinach.  No one would be lurking with a camera, trying to immortalize her in the frozen food Hall of Fame.  Life in the gray-green country was good; sometimes people left, but mostly, they stayed, because there wasn't anything that they really needed that couldn't be found inside their own gray-green haven.