Like an explosion, all the little birds scatter and disappear in an instant.
One bigger bird lands in the tree.
Coopers Hawk. It eats birds.
There’ll be no sign of the little ones again for quite a while.
We had candy cigarettes we could pretend to smoke before we ate them.
Fake cigarettes that would puff smoke so we could practice smoking and look cool.

And bubble gum cigarettes we could pretend to smoke before we chewed them.
“Grooming” is the word that comes to mind. We were children being groomed to be future tobacco consumers.
That’s what we offer at our company. It reads like this:
If you ever feel Taylor, Roth and Company’s price exceeds the value of the services we have provided, pay only the value you perceive for that service.
We maintain that we are very good at what we do, our fees make sense, and the value will be apparent. If you don’t agree, we won’t protest. We won’t litigate. We don’t need, or want, to be paid if we don’t perform.
I submit that every superstar-athlete contract should include that same language.