The Produce Dance

I am excited by produce. The bright colors and delicious smells make me giddy. I pick a fruit and I take my time with it. I smell it. I turn it over in my hands and squeeze it lovingly before carefully placing it in a bag. Every piece must pass a rigorous screening developed by an expert fruit buyer (yeah that’s right, it’s me) before it earns a spot in my produce bag. You may be asking yourself, “What makes you such an expert?” Well, I eat a lot of fruits and veggies and I like a lot of fruits and veggies, and I watch the food network a lot and that’s good enough for me. So I take my expert eyes, hands and sniffer and pick out the best apples, squash and zucchini that a grocery store can provide.

When I get to the checkout, I carefully place each bag of bright, beautiful, perfect fruit on the belt. I make sure to space the fruit out inside the bag so they don’t bang against each other and turn one in each bag so the sticker is visible. I watch my yummies ride the belt and come to an abrupt, jerky stop at the register. The checkout lady grabs them up with her talons and drops them down on the scale. I can hear each apple bounce once, twice. I can feel the flesh weaken and bruise. Gone are the gentle, respectful hands of the expert. They’ve been replaced by the efficient, careless pirate hooks of a checkout lady that would prefer to be anyplace else. After the apples are sufficiently bruised, she rolls them down to the bagger. I hear every rotation. Whomp. Whomp. Whomp. The bagger grabs the bag by the corner and the apples clunk together. He raises the other hand and worries a cluster of pimples on is chin, and is completely serious when he asks, “Do you mind if I put your apples on top of these cans?” Does it matter at this point? Why don’t you just kick them to the car for me? “Just leave them out. I’ll take care of them.” I scoop up my once fantastic, flawless specimens of sweet natural goodness which are now scarred and broken and head to the car. These little guys will need my acceptance now more than ever.