Lost Cause

I’ve given up going to the health food store. To a certain extent, I feel disingenuous trucking around buying organic products at lunch, then heading home for a meal chock-full of conventional products, and maybe also some processed junk food and/or a restaurant meal. And honestly, I just can’t buy into the concept for any other reason than I am a small-minded jerk. The completely obnoxious, contrarian cynic in me is irritated by organic foods, like what, they think they’re so much BETTER than the peppers I can get at Publix? I am better than YOU, peppers.

I know it’s stupid, and again, I am small. So very small. And while my teeny constitution is part of my healthy exodus, it’s also that there’s this customer that I keep running into at the deli counter, no matter when I get there for my free-range assless turkey on some sort of sprouted grain. Honestly, she was the last straw in my fake-organic life. Every time I see her, I feel like she was planted there to torture me like some sort of bizarre SNL character.

The other customers look normal. There are even some people like me! Colleagues, even. Families. And yet: I get stuck next to the woman in head-to-to batik with the long fuzzy hair and ancient Birkenstocks. She always orders the same thing: a double shot of wheat grass juice, and every SINGLE day, without fail, she launches off on the same tirade about how wheatgrass is “the same as eating 2 and a half pounds of fresh vegetables, you know!”
And then she hovers while she sucks down the shots, and I. just. can’t. take. it.

For starters, while my wrap is being made, she makes comments to me about the woman who is making it: “She’s an artist, you know,” she nods knowledgably. “Look at the way she’s placing those sprouts! It’s BEAUTIFUL! She’s beautiful. The sprouts are beautiful. It’s pure artistry. Beautiful. Beautiful sprouts.”

Swoosh! Swoosh! goes her giant skirt. Swoosh! goes her hair.

“The water just beads off of my skin since I’ve been drinking four shots of wheatgrass every day!”

She rubs her arm gently. Up down. Up down.

SWOOSH! goes her bell sleeve.

The first time I asked for cheese on my wrap, she lectured me about the “mucal properties of casein-based foods.” Mucal? MUCAL. And every day since then, she asks me if I’m still consuming “casein and other mucus-based products?” It took me a few days to realize she meant dairy. Yes, I’m still eating dairy. I practically grew up on a DAIRY FARM, for God’s sake, I AM EATING DAIRY EVEN IF IT’S MUCUS.

I can’t take all the artistry, swooshing and mucus-talk. I can’t. I know not all health-food people are like this, but I keep getting STUCK with her, and although it’s my fault for not telling her to stop (I probably encourage her with my bizarre nodding and smiling and “wow, mucus?” mumblings), I no longer have any desire to think about snot-related products over my lunch hour.

I’ve taken to the Greek restaurant up the block from my office that I walk by every day. And though it’s not organic, and although the woman who takes my order over the phone is about 100-years-old, and also, completely deaf, forcing me to scream, “SMALL GREEK SALAD. EXTRA FETA.” “No no, EXTRA feta!” “No, not NO FETA, EXTRA FETA,” it works for me. And there is that time she insisted my name was Jennifer Morris and that I owed her $110 for a giant order of moussaka that Jennifer paid for with a bad credit card. Although she eyes me suspiciously and still believes it was me, I’ll take the fisheye over hearing about mucus any day of the week.

But the real reason for this long, drawn out foodfest is Freddy, the restaurant’s resident bird. Dude, have you ever been around a sun conure? This is my first, and I love hearing him murmur in a slightly lecherous tone, “Hey, pretty girl!” every time I walk by, even though I’m sure he says that to all the girls.

I’m a loud sneezer – picture the loudest, screamingest horking-snot sneeze you can imagine, and, I don’t know, amplify it. I’ve tried everything I can to stifle it. I’ve tried being all delicate-like, and I just end up sneezing more, and snotting all over myself. The only way to sneeze is loud, and is usually followed by something like, “Hoo!” or “Oy!” I’ve tried to fix this. Adam has begged me to fix this. I can’t. I recognize that right now most of you are thinking that you would rather eat birdshit than be around me, but this is just…well, it’s just the way it is.

Anyway. Today I walked by Freddy, and I sneezed loudly as usual. “GAAAACHOOOO! OY!”

And then he started practicing it, tentatively at first, “GAAACH!” “OOO!” “GAATCHOOO!” And then a random, “Oy!” He bobbed his head up and down up, up and down, “GAATCHOO! OY!”

He greeted me with “GAAATCHOOOO! OY!” all day today. And it was friggin’ awesome.

*Beck

22 comments September 25th, 2006