You invested well, sold some properties in Belgrade? You’ve just come back from that timeshare in Acapulco. They’ve put your name on the glass door at the firm?

Things are looking good, even here in Maine. You’re in the upper 1 percent, and you’re rich. You’ve worked hard, and you deserve it. Look around your wonderful house. You two have spent a fortune updating it, haven’t you?

There’s the new bathroom, kitchen and that hi-tech camera system you had put in. You must feel safe and warm here. If this sounds like you, then sit up and pay attention. Life is just about to get even more exciting.

You come home from a round of golf and go to your fridge to pull out a cold beer.

You open the fridge and tons of food come tumbling out. Wait a minute. What? Where did all this stuff come from? Imported beer, veggies, two dozen eggs, a ton of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.

You check the pantry. Stuff is falling off the shelves. When did she have time in her busy day to shop for this stuff?

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There’s a note on the butcher block.

“Thank you for your order — Walmart.”

She’s shopping at Walmart? WALMART? My arm candy mingling with “Walmart people?”

Yes, Walmart. Social media tell us that the world’s largest retailer recently announced a new service currently being tested in California’s trendy Silicon Valley that will deliver your order straight to your house.

No, I know you’re not in Silicon Valley. That’s a test area. But central Maine is on Walmart’s radar, and they’re coming for us.

Walmart has hooked up with a hi-tech company called August that makes locks you can monitor on your smartphone. Yes, even yours.

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Imagine: If you’re at the office, involved in a big, important deal, and the wife is in New York buying clothes, Walmart will send their crew with your avocados, lettuce, tomatoes, milk, eggs, even frozen foods, right to the house.

Here’s how it works: The driver and his crew have a passcode that lets them into your house. Whoa!

You will be interrupted in your boardroom or out on the links on your iPhone — of course you’ve got an iPhone, and it’s probably the one-thousand-buck number — so you can watch the action.

Weird? Scary? Don’t worry. Of course, at this point in your life, you have cameras throughout that gorgeous house of yours out on Great Pond, just like those your successful lawyer son has in his house in Yarmouth, so you can watch what’s happening. That’s the magic of this plan.

Wait. I don’t live in Yarmouth. If you’re like me, you’re thinking that before I allow strangers to put my almond milk in my cluttered fridge and Cheerios in my pantry, I have a few questions.

Will the driver and his crew be vetted through extreme background checks like what the White House does with facial recognition and hi-tech fingerprints, just as if they were buying a gun? That makes me feel better.

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Will Walmart ask the important questions? Where did they go to school? Are they married? Do they have pets? What kind of pets? Research tells us that men and women who have Labs and collies are more reliable than folks who have pit bulls. Is that true?

I will be watching them, so will they watch back? Wave? I don’t like waving.

What if they want to use my bathroom? What if they don’t flush or wash their hands, or they use my toothbrush? She didn’t want cameras in the bathroom. How will I know?

Will they have “take your kids to work day”? I don’t want kids around my house, and certainly not pit bulls, not even Labs or collies. They shed.

She, who is calmer, tells me to chill out. “We’re retired,” she says.

Yes, I’m a writer, she’s a retired teacher, and so we’re very poor.

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What if they choose to do this on my street? She will never agree to this. Then why has she started cleaning the fridge?

But who was it who said, “No dream is too big. No challenge is too great. Nothing we want for our future is beyond our reach.”?

Donald Trump.

OMG. OMG.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.


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