in the hole

I walked in the rain to the Hole Fnords to get bread, coffee, and cake mix if it wasn't too organic-looking. Ooops, came back with bread, coffee, cake mix, fancy dates, german brie, apples, sandwich chicken sliced paper thin, eggs stolen gently from happy, free, flying-chickens, and other kind of bread with sunflower seeds in it, bread that claims, I believe, to transmit love. I was thinking I should only buy absolutely necessary staples and maybe one small luxury item like fancy cheese or ... you know... all that crap that looks so tempting... fig-lemon-passionfruit spread, and cutting boards made of bamboo, and sugar cookies with candied guava peel and organic uranium sprinkled on top that are like 12.99 a bag.... Um, the point is that the indulgent fancy groceries need to be CURBED. Should I be buying organic happy eggs for 3.50 a doz. when I could be buying evil corporate eggs for way cheaper? Or is the guilt of being non-organic and cruel worse than the guilt of being rich enough for the happy eggs?

It's really good bread!

Conversation in line with a very old lady with a thick french accent, about the woman in florida with the feeding tube etc. etc. She says, even if she is brain dead and the plug could be pulled, the husband should not get to have any say in the decision, because he used to beat her up and his motives are suspect. Then she warned me that the guys in the bakery/deli don't always wear latex gloves when they're touching the food, and I should WATCH OUT. I had a warm feeling of genuine human contact that was very odd, as if I were suddenly buddha and could see into this woman's entire life. Either that or I just wet my pants again.

It used to really annoy me when I was a kid and would go to stores with my grandfather and he'd chat with people as if he cared. It seemed so phoney. But they knew his name and he knew theirs and stuff. He got around. It was also weird and embarrassing and took up time, time when I could have been sitting happily in the car reading if he hadn't been dragging me around to hardware stores and liquor stores and bars trying to force me to "look at the world and learn something" and also to make me interact and speak up, look people in the eye and shake hands. A big part of what made it seem disgusting and false to me is that then we'd go home and he'd be surly and mean and snippy to my grandma, who would be surly and mean and snippy to him back. Being nice to strangers while being mean to your family was a red flag for me.

Anyway, oddly, now I'm the sort of chatty-listeny person who knows all about my allergist's receptionist's son's agonies as he tries to finish his college applications and if I saw her 10 years from now I'd be all like, "Oh! so how is your son the history major!" and Moomin will roll his eyes and think that I'm embarrassing and old. Village gossip, it's so much nicer now that I live here for sure for a good long time.

Back to translating. After the brie warms up, look out, world, for I shall devour it.

Comments

[GraceD]

My kid said with narrowed eyes after I carried on a lively conversation with perfect strangers in Hawaii, "Mom, do you have to bond with EVERYBODY?"

Oh and watch out for those latinos who ladle out the couscous and marinated tofu barehanded. Mexican germs, dios mio!

[Prentiss Riddle]

I heard Danah Boyd, staff anthropologist at Google, talking at SxSW about the "rule of 150": it's only congnitively possible for us to keep the small bonding chit-chat in our heads for around 150 people.

Presumably the 150 could be 50 for me and 300 for you, but still. Could that figure into why some people prefer to be parsimonious with their bonding? And are promiscuous bonders too easy-come, easy-go, in the sense that any stranger at the supermarket can make you forget about me if I'm number 150 on your list?