We live in an ever more dangerous and scary world, with each day bringing new threats and new worries. Communities once accustomed to knowing everyone and trusting everyone enough to leave their doors unlocked have long since dispensed with that quaint custom, because our most familiar neighbors might do harm.
Most often threats come in a quite direct and easily grasped form, be it drunk drivers, wild fires, or burglars. These threats we understand. We know how to combat them, even if they can never be entirely eradicated. But just feeling that we understand them goes a very long way.
Stripped away from us was that minimal sense of security in one American town stricken to the core by that most insidious, unnerving and dangerous afflicting phenomenon: mysteriously placed bowls of mashed potatoes. Be warned, the remainder of this article may be too terrifying for the eyes of young ones.
Meet the all-American town of Jackson, Mississippi. Called “The City With Soul” due to its long tradition of blues, jazz, gospel and folk music, it is the state capital. But it became the world capital of terror when some unknown person or force began secreting bowls of mashed potatoes into the mail boxes, onto the porches and doorsteps, of innocent, God-fearing Mississippians.
One Jackson resident, Jordan Lewis, described his neighborhood as quirky- exactly the sort of free spirited place ripe for exploitation by some malevolent mashed potato fiend. Lewis opines that the happening may be an innocent prank perpetrated by someone with no evil intent beyond startling and confusing the recipients. But what could possibly be innocent about the doling out of carb heavy and sodium rich mashed potatoes? The answer is clearly absolutely nothing.
Another Jackson resident- Sebastian Bjernegard- was made more sensible by a close call of the mashed potatoes kind, in which he nearly stepped into a bowl of the scourge that had been lying in wait for him. Fortunately he was able to sidestep it and is consequently alive to tell the tale and sound a warning. He reports the belief among many locals that ill purpose lay behind the ninja-like distribution of steaming bowls of creamy, buttery mashed potatoes to unsuspecting Jacksonians.
"Some people were thinking maybe the mashed potatoes were poisoned to kill animals," Bjernegard said, bravely speaking what many in his community are too intimidated by the potato masher in their midst to say. "I didn't taste it. I have a three-second rule, so I didn't touch it. But some people were worried."
Whether you live in Jackson or not, this concerns you. A copycat of the original potato masher and imitate them where you live. And it may not even be mashed potatoes: it could be baked potatoes, potatoes au gratin, hash browns, or even potato chips. So it behooves you to have a plan for what to do if and when the potatoes come for you.
DO NOT eat the potatoes. Do not be seduced by their delicious smell, or by the inviting presentation of the bowl they’re in or the saran wrap covering them. Watch where you step: take care not to go about in bare feet at all. Have code words with friends and loved ones to prove they are not mashed potatoes. And with God’s grace we may survive the mashed potato crisis.
