He walked into a shop to buy rice or a doll.  If he thought about it, he could have confused himself even more.  He had to stop.  Was he in the right shop?  Why did he feel that the shop was grotesquely overstocked for his modest needs?  He picked one row and walked down it.  Not a thing on the shelves that he could ever need.  Did he suffer from an atrophying of needs?  He reversed direction, down another aisle.  Multiple shelves of stacked multicolored cans.  A sudden knowing struck him: he could buy a can opener, as would do a practical man, so that if a need for a can ever arose, he’d have — like others around him — the tool at hand.