Fill Your Lungs

Stepping into her luxurious apartment in the city on Christmas Eve, Caitlyn felt tears welling up in her eyes. And to think, just four days ago, she’d dreaded leaving. That was before she’d ever been to the hamlet of Frosty Vista.

It had been within her reach: the thing she’d always dreamed of. She’d busted her butt to get into college. Then she’d worked hard during college, both in the classroom and outside of it, where she held down three jobs. After college, she climbed the corporate ladder. And finally, she’d made it to the top rung. Or, almost to the top rung.

It should’ve been so simple. She’d been sent to the quaint town by her boss just a week before the holidays. All she needed to do was secure the recipe for the famous gingerbread cookies from the local bakery for one of their clients, a cookie conglomerate whose offerings could be found in supermarkets and airlines the world over.

The recipe and the bakery, her boss told her, had been handed down from one generation to the next. She was to meet the current proprietor, the great-grandson of the recipe’s author. It all lined up perfectly. She found him, a widowed single father, deep in debt. Her offer could help. But he was as obstinate as he was strikingly handsome.

Over the course of the following days, he took her around Frosty Vista, begrudgingly at first, but he softened eventually. And during this time, Caitlyn began to see how the bakery touched every corner of the town, from providing dessert to those who frequented the local soup kitchen to baking a gingerbread wedding cake for the local mayor and her husband, who’d once been high school sweethearts, only to drift apart and reconnect during the holidays last year.

In the end, the rustically attractive bakery owner hadn’t relinquished the recipe, and his spunky and ambitious adolescent daughter had managed to rally the townspeople to invest in the bakery and pay off their debts.

Caitlyn had failed, in other words.

That was not why she felt so sad, though. Walking around the streets of the quiet town, she’d felt invigorated. She’d even secretly begun drawing up a plan to help the bakery grow its business locally and avoid going into debt again. Why hadn’t she shown it to them? Because she wanted to get back home to the city. But now that she was back, life felt stale. It felt a little sour. It felt suffocating. She hadn’t gotten the recipe, which meant she wouldn’t get the promotion. Things were growing stagnant. When she got down to it, her life here stunk.

So, she made up her mind. She would go back. She would show them her work. She would live out her days in the small town.

Caitlyn shook with excitement. She wiped away her tears and took a deep, anticipatory breath.

And that was when something occurred to her: did life feel stale, sour, suffocating, stagnant, and downright stinky? Or was that just the air in this apartment? After all, she’d been away for a few days.

On a whim, Caitlyn checked Meh, her favorite deal site. It so happened that they were selling a Sharper Image by Vornado PURIFY 9 3-Stage HEPA Large Room Air Purifier, with 6 speed settings, simple controls, and activated carbon filters for trapping nasty odors. This one:

Caitlyn ordered it, and when it showed up in the beginning of the New Year, she set it up and enjoyed clean air all winter long.

She eventually got her promotion and lived a life of luxury and success in the big city.

She never returned to Frosty Vista.