I go grocery shopping every Saturday, it seems, whether I need to or not. The past two Saturdays is when my cute story takes place. Different people, same store.
Because this story involves two different individuals, I will attempt to describe them in a non-offensive manner.
The first character i encountered was what would be known as an African American, someone whose ancestors would be found in Africa. The second character on the next week was what would be called a White person, someone whose ancestors most likely came from Europe. They were both young males, I would say teenagers, and because their ancestry has nothing to do with anything, I will just refer to them as American teenagers.
I was in the produce department looking for fresh dill. After spending 5 minutes trying to open the plastic produce bag, I put the fresh dill in and threw it into my basket. And continued shopping.
This is where the cute starts. At the checkout, one of the American teenagers was whipping my groceries down the conveyor belt three times faster than I was putting it all into bags. Suddenly he stopped. I looked at him. He looked at me. He was holding my bag of fresh dill. He said, “Spinach?” I guess I was surprised that an American teenager wouldn’t know what spinach looks like. Are people not feeding their children?
So last Saturday, I again find myself in the produce department wrestling with those plastic bags that don’t open. I’ve started to keep the ones I can’t open in my car to try to open during long red lights. Anyway, three peaches went into one bag, two sweat potatoes into another.
At the checkout, I picked the lane of the American teenager mainly because I had 30 thousand cans of cat food and 50 million pounds of kitty litter and I hate to do that to the two older people who also work the checkout.
He starts throwing things down the conveyor, the cans of cat food really flew, until he abruptly stopped. He holds up the bag of sweet potatoes and asks, “What are these?” I tell him sweet potatoes. He looks back at his computer screen and asks, “Yams?” So I tell him again that they are sweet potatoes and that I think yams have a slightly different outside color. I don’t know, they were probably the same price. And I don’t know what he finally called them.
So I continue bagging the stuff coming down the belt until he stops again. “What kind of apples are these?” By now we’re drawing an audience. I said, “They’re peaches.” I don’t think the American teenager noticed the man next in line shaking his head in disbelief. I guess you figure that if someone works in a grocery store that they could at least identify fruit and vegetables.
The funny thing was when I got home I looked at the sweet potatoes and the peaches. They all had codes on the little stickers that would have said what the item was when typed in.
Oh well, I wonder what will happen next week at the grocery store.
Adios
Musings over 50 