Liars and Crybabies at Fairway

Finally, to Fairway for more olives. The woman ahead of me in the cheese line asks for "a quarter pound of your nuttiest Gouda." The cheese husband directs her to a section holding pre-sliced cheese. So I don't have to wait too long. The sign behind the cheese counter boasts that Fairway invented cheese 3000 years ago. I appreciate such conspicuous lying. Sounds like the Penelope character on Saturday Night Live. "I just gave birth to 6 babies and they all were born speaking three languages." Watching that skit is like getting a brain massage for some reason.

I know this cheese guy is patient because when I ask him what the best kind of cheese is he doesn't get annoyed with me. He patiently explains that there are at least 30 different classifications, what sort of thing do you like? I insist on knowing what the best kind is. He says Pyrenees, but he can't find the kind he prefers. So I get another kind. Tastes lots like the Etorki I already love. But I know my taste buds are too distresseed, in the home decor sense, to pick up much subtlety.

There's something going on at the fish counter. I hear a guy saying "they're all a bunch of cry babies," all the guys that work the counter are looking at him. The fish, laid out like tiles on immaculate ice, stare silently from glazed eyeballs. I demand to know who the crybabies are. They are professional athletes who have become prima donnas, in it for the money, not the game. That guy was in a snit. I get in his snit, modern people stink, we are such petulant softies, drowning in freedom of choice and convenience. Empowering our most self involved tendencies. Complaining about a few unpleasant odors when even 100 years ago people tolerated unbelievable inconvenience and unpleasantness because they had to. I can't tell you how often I've wished I could send a child of mine back in time for 15 minutes to see how many shows they had to fight over in the 15th Century.

Ok, I guess I'm still in that snit. I need a kinder perspective.

I finish shopping in gleeful mania, smiling at the panic attack I had when I went to Fairway the first time. I can tell the guy checking out behind me knows how to cook some whatnot. He carefully places cuts of meat onto the conveyer belt, things I don't even have names for. Behind them he piles fresh herbs, pinoli, other things. I wonder if he's the brooklyn bachelor. But I think he might be a vegetarian.