Sunday, May 29, 2016

That's Crazy

  T  he young blonde Asian woman behind the counter at the health food store flashed me a smile as I set my glass bottle of 2% goat's milk and an empty from last week down in front of her.

I was feeling expansive. "Who did your hair? Stevie Wonder? Looks 'Wonder-ful,'" I babbled chirpily. She giggled.

"I get two bucks back on this empty, right?" I asked, reaching into my pocket for my cash.

"Yes, I give you two dollars for the bottle after."

She rang me up. "That'll be $6.34," she smiled, and I looked at the bill in my hand: $5.

"Uh, but I get two dollars, right?" I said, not understanding.

"Two dollars back, yes, after!" she said happily.

I gave up and pulled out my credit card. "Credit?" I said, blinking my eyes rapidly in a nonsensical gesture of joy.

"Sure!" she said, and I rang in my card.

She pulled out the receipt, opened the drawer and gave me a two-dollar coin.

I looked at the coin and looked at the five dollar bill in my hand.

I put my credit card back in my pocket.

"Hey, thanks!" I said, in genuine pleasure. I now had $7 in my pocket to blow; off to Dollorama!

This could be a parable for what is wrong with this world; in which a functioning human being is so confused that she can't put one step mentally ahead of another step unless it makes sense to her oddly ordered mind, which does not jibe with the real-life workings of the observable universe and its billion trillion galaxies.

It somehow made more sense to her to force me to use my credit card, just because that magic two-dollar deposit had to come after the whole transaction; gods forbid the eternal rhythm of the Register Gods be disturbed.

So this is my new life? I thought, ponderously. Goat's milk and sprouts for dinner?

I thought about this on the way home. Is this what the goal of this whole thing was all about—to change my diet so radically that I need access to a health food store just for my basic dietetic necessities?

That's crazy, I thought.

But then I thought, what's crazy? Is chowing down on a mouthful of Lecithin, artificial flavor, emulsifier, corn syrup, sugar, palm oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, artificial flavour (2) smart? (Snickers bar)

How about Lactose, Sodium Diacetate, Maltodextrin, Salt, Malic Acid, Sodium Citrate and Sunflower Oil? (Lay's potato chips)

Or Sugar, milkfat, salt, artificial flavour, cornstarch, dextrin, artificial colouring (Blue 1 Lake, Red 40 Lake, Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 40, Blue 1, Blue 2 Lake, Yellow 6 Lake, Blue 2) gum acacia, lactose (M&Ms)

This could be someone's lunchtime snack regimen. There are actually people who eat this, day in, day out, for years, decades, every single day.

How about you? Do you eat this? Why not just hang out in a chemistry lab all day and munch on the pickings?

What's crazy?

Yes, it's an extra effort to go to the health food store, and frankly, quite silly to think that goat's milk is any better for me than cow's milk (it's not).

But it makes me feel good about myself; it makes my bacteria feel good about ME.

I imagine that down there they're thanking their lucky stars that they've found a human who managed to turn the page from the Western Diet to something sane, something they could actually live on, instead of constantly swimming in a chemical and grease-gob-filled swill of crap that their owner somehow confused with food.

That's crazy. Right?

In my next post, I'll tell you what this thirty days of discovery and deprivation has taught me; and I can tell you, it's not crazy.

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