I awoke! Where was I? I didn’t know what had happened to me only that something did. A cold chill settled on my outer layer but I could not feel it. Numbness had captured my body. I sensed that my internal structures were broken.  They had always been brittle and were prone to that happening. I was unable to move. I felt lost, alone.

     I had been in a rut, stuck in a stagnant world while everything around me appeared to move forward. I craved change, but this was not the change I was expecting. My eyes now looked at the world that I had been trapped in with a totally new perspective.

     The isle of the supermarket was wonderful. I was so used to the same old items stacked in the shelves of this section but now I admired the wondrous diversity that lived here. Fragments of illumination from a distant exit light highlighted the cluster of dust underneath the surrounding shelves. The dust failed to conceal a long line of other isles that stretched out into the distance. I had always been trapped in this one. I wondered what they were like?

      A flood of light revealed itself from the darkness. The supermarket had come alive. Pairs of feet of varying shapes, sizes and smells, accompanied by four wheeled beasts past me as if I didn’t exist. How could they miss me? Was I invisible to them? Had people become so cold hearted? Trapped in their own bubble and Ignorant to the world around them? This change had allowed fear to intrude on my thoughts; it was an unwelcome distraction. Maybe change wasn’t all it was cracked up to be? Home was now the one place I longed to return.

     Then it happened! A gentle pair of hands (I could tell by the way it carefully nurtured my broken body) had wrapped its kindness around me. I was lifted into the air and placed back into an environment that was familiar. It was the very place I must have fallen from: the fifth shelf of the pasta section. My fellow brothers, all named exactly the same as me, Fettuccine, along with my cousins, Ravioli, Penne, Spaghetti and Gnocchi didn’t say much when I returned. I was grateful to be home. I never wanted to leave again.

      It was short lived! An unfriendly hand with malicious intend snatched me from my home. Thud! Snap! As I was dumped into the metal caged beast that I had seen stroll past so often, I knew the horrible sound I heard meant more of my internal structures had been broken. My life, which had been so static and dull, was now moving in a different direction, one of no return.