No Bananas for You!
What a difference a 9 makes.
I shop every week in a local supermarket chain, just like so many Americans and maybe you too, dear reader.
I like to be left alone when I am out of the office including when I am shopping. That means — “go away, don’t talk to me and that means you!”
So, after decades of buying my own food asking no one for any help in determining what the difference is between whipped cream and whipping cream, between brown eggs and white eggs and between butter and margarine, I have become a ‘shopping by myself’ expert, I assure you. I am fiercely independent and use the self-check out because I am not only anti-social, I am smart enough to figure out which way the bar code goes.
So, now with decades of shopping and running bar codes over the glass laser thing, I walk up to the self-check out, scan my lettuce, pork loin, bread and finally bananas. However, as you know, bananas do not scan. They have no bar code, none and never, ever have.
Harvard professors tell us that it has to do with some U.N. Convention like maybe the “ Let’s Not Make It Look Like The World Is Going To End Committee.” That is where they announced: “The sign of the Apocalypse is that everyone and everything will have bar code on it. However, if we pick one item and do not make it scannable, then people will not think that the Eschaton is nigh.”
I think it was the representative from Diego Garcia who came up with that idea. It was probably to be fun because if you know anything about that tiny island in the Indian Ocean, when the end of the world comes, they will just be watching because even the four horsemen of the Apocalypse cannot find it on a map.
I once knew a man assigned there by the United States Navy. He explained that one of the first things he had to do once he arrived was to order toilet paper because it took a year for anything to arrive there. Since he had three hundred sixty five days left on his assignment, he did not want to discover that the man before him did not order enough in case he had to stay another day.
So, I put my bananas on the scanner and touched the screen to type in the number. I do not know if it is the same code in the whole world, even Diego Garcia, but I know for decades I typed in 4011. Without double checking, a gross error I would discover. I now move my now officially 2.4 pounds of bananas to the bag.
“Excuse me sir,” The attendant says to me. “These are actually 94011 because they are organic bananas.”
“What is the difference?” I asked as he shows me the label and that in fact he is correct, while not aware that he is violating ‘the keep away from me’ rule in my life. I learned that not only are they organic bananas, they are “certified organic bananas”.
I guess the difference is that someone is in an ultra clean laboratory with an electron microscope making sure that each of my bananas has a carbon based molecule within it. Obviously, if they are going to go through the trouble of certifying that indeed my bananas are organic and then put a 9 before the 4011, I should at least show them the respect of touching that nine. I am now buying certified organic bananas, my friend. I, after all, moved up in the world. None of this, we are assuming these are organic bananas for my kitchen! No, No, No! I know they are organic because I bought certified organic bananas.
So, please excuse me if I offer you a half a banana and keep the rest for myself later. You can buy assumed organic bananas anywhere, but I have certified organic bananas and I do not want to run out of them too quickly.
So, the moral of the story is simple, assuming not only makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’, it may cheat you out of the experience of buying bananas that are certified to be of an organic nature. I am sorry, I am obviously in a new social class now and I would not want to eat anything else.