Grandmother, parts 2280 - 2283

 2280. If a person is selling cars, then they also probably drive one, and if a person is selling bananas they probably also eat them. The seller can imagine being the buyer in each of those situations. Even a person who is selling jewelry he could never afford can still imagine being rich and buying the items they are trying to sell.

  2281.  But a person who is selling something they would never buy themselves, and can hardly even imagine anyone would want, can never develop confidence in their trade no matter how well they do. Each sale is an unexpected anomaly. Coromo would never have been tempted to purchase any paintings, not his own or anyone else’s. This was the reason he kept his credit card balance at zero, because he always thought his most recent sale would be his last.

  2282. But the credit card affected his imagination, let me give you an example. You remember how Coromo acquired a French landscape painter’s easel from the maintenance department dumpster shortly after seeing one for sale in the resort department store for $1800 dollars. Back then he was horrified and confused by the object and its price, but now if he were to see it he would have thought, “I could buy this right now, with my credit card.”

 2283. This was not an idle meaningless thought, and it was not rare or unusual. The phrase, “I can buy this if I want to,” was a recurring set of words that entered his thinking unbidden over and over again.