Remember when I wrote a while back about how much I love stumping the grocery clerks with my vegetables? And you know how they say that pride cometh before a fall.
The other day I was gathering up my produce from the shopping list I had made. On my list were 1 serrano pepper and 1 jalapeno. I went over to the peppers bins.
Now, understand. I have bought lots and lots and lots of jalapenos. Salsa would not be the same without them. I know what jalapenos look like! I put a serrano in my cart, and then found the bin labeled "jalapenos". I looked at its contents for a minute, a little stumped. I mean, they didn't look like jalapenos! They were big, and light green. I vacillitated for a minute and then took one and put it in another baggie. My reasoning was, maybe they're just big, lighter-green jalapenos.
I got to the counter, loaded all my groceries onto the conveyor belt, and moved over to watch all the prices scan through (I admit I'm a little obsessive about this. But I've had someone double charge me more than once.) Anyway, the checker got to my peppers in their seperate little baggies. She scanned the first one in, then got the second one. Watching her, I realized that the two peppers looked exactly the same. how odd, I thought, that a jalapeno pepper can look exactly like a serrano pepper? How do the farmers tell them apart?
The checker paused for a minute, looking at the second, identical pepper, then looking at me in confusion. "It's a jalapeno," I ventured, though by this time my conviction was faltering slightly.
"Um," the checker said, "It's not a jalapeno."
I turned bright red. "Right," I said, "well, it had a sign that said Jalapenos!"
The checker gave me a kindly look and sent her bagging assistant to go get the poor, vegetable-challenged lady her jalapeno.
in my own defense, they were out of jalapenos.
PS: now all you internets know something extremely embarrassing about me... despite the cyincal, skeptical facade I try to put on, I'm an extremely gullible person. My loving family and good friends already know this, and now you do. But this is the only time I'll ever admit to it.
4 comments:
yeh, some checker or bagger or pricer took the avialable peppers and put them where he or she wanted to put them and you so trusting took it at face value that you had it right...i guessed the end of this story before i even finished it on your post...you are a liberal, trusting, thinking the government or store will do it right, and not like all the others of a conservative bent thinking we the people should be involved...oooooh sorry what did i say, aren't we just talking about peppers and not the world out there
Fun story! I often have to eat my words, or say something blitheringly idiotic now and again. You're not alone!
ha ha ha. Barlow. Leave it to you to say exactly what I was afraid someone would say. You've hit me right in my weak spot.
Here's the thing, though. I have read and read and listened and listened to people, gone through my bitter, disenfranchised phases... and ultimately I have come up with one thing that feels right, when it comes to government: I HAVE to believe that we. are. government. Government is not an "other," it is America represented and delegated for the purpose of decision making that will benefit everyone and represent as representative a cross-section of desires as possible.
Now, I don't think it works perfectly right now. I think there's corruption, there is an apathetic majority who doesn't even care to take themselves to the voting booth, etc. But deciding then, to fear and distrust our leaders, is tantamount to throwing away the gospel because Joseph Smith got your name wrong in a revelation, IMHO. I have to believe in America as a working system, and in government as an extension of self. If I didn't believe in those things, maybe I would start feeling apathetic enough to stay home on election day myself.
I trust people to put up the right signs. I believe they want to do that. I get surpised when my Jalapenos turn out to be Serranos. And I intend to keep it that way, because I want to trust.
yep, i had you figured out alright...it is all those poems on the grood stuff that gives you away, and if hadn't been for you ,i might still be republican with liberal points of view, wouldn't that be awful? read the teach, she wants me to move back to boston, i honestly can't live with my neighbors and josh and cameron, and jon...i am in an angry body...i might even be in an angry body no matter who was in power..cosrv. or lib
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