Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Which planet were you from....

It's still spring break, and I use the forced time off to accomplish a few things. It's not actually time off - I do get a lot of work done while my son plays video games or watches tv for a couple of hours and then again after everyone goes to bed. It makes for some long days. So today when I went grocery shopping, I wasn't sure if I could believe what I was hearing.

I do believe I have mentioned a time or two that there are a lot of students in my area... in the produce section, I found three of them shopping together. One girl was picking out oranges, while the other one was admiring the apples.

"Wow! Look at all the apples! They smell so... apple-y! And there's so many colors!" She picks up one and turns it over and over in her hand. "What's this apple called?"

Her roomie was rolling her eyes, so I supplied "Golden Delicious."

"And this one?"

"Fuji."

We went through Red Delicious, Granny Smith, MacIntosh, Rome, Gala. Then she put the apple back and went over to the bananas. "Look! They're only fifty-nine cents? Is that for one or the whole bunch? God, bananas are cheap! We should get some!"

The roomie and I said in unision, "They're fifty-nine cents a POUND." Blank look. I pointed to a scale. Lightbulb.

At this point, the third student, a guy, came ambling over with a package of hotdogs and a six-pack of beer. "You ready to go yet? Why is it taking so long to get some fruit?"

Clueless grabbed a bunch of bananas and ran over to gush about how inexpensive bananas were, while roomie's eyes made another circuit to the back of her head. They wandered off, leaving me to ponder in front of the avacados. Has this girl NEVER been in a grocery store before? How is that possible?

I knew how to figure unit pricing by the time I was 10. As many kids as we had in our family? The food dollar had to stretch quite a ways and unit pricing was the backbone of our shopping trips.

Somehow I don't think that girl would understand anything about that....

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the way hot dogs were enough for the guy. I burns me when the checkers don't recognize the veggies you're buying. Haven't they ever seen a fresh beet? Or an artichoke? I can't be the only person in the world buying produce!

Tracey said...

Too funny. I live in a college town so conversations like that abound in the grocery stores!

Anonymous said...

I never buy fruit. I ought to buy more fruit.

Patience said...

"They smell so . . . apple-y!"

Sounds like she was dumbing down to impress some guy.

I have a feeling her lightbulb is only about 10W!