You know how some things just taste better than other things? I’m not talking about the obvious chocolate cake tastes better than eggplant (unless you don’t like chocolate cake or have a closet obsession with eggplant, yikes) or spaghetti tastes better than anchovies (unless you’re cutting carbs and are interested in a high sodium intake). I’m talking about brand versus brand and shape versus shape here.
Earlier in the year, I found myself in the grocery store, my head swiveling and my heart racing as I had to make a decision between Oreos or Store Brand Chocolate Crème Sandwich Cookies. I had to make a decision, and I had to make a hurried decision because my roommates were waiting mere feet away from me, their toes tapping the unmopped, scuffed linoleum floor of our local grocer.
“They all taste the same,” Roommate One said to me.
With beads of sweat dripping down my forehead in anxiety, I reached for the naturally cheaper, store brand sandwich cookies. When we got home, I pried one from its crinkly container and ate it. Devastation. Complete and utter devastation. It was like I could taste the genericosity (yes, I made that word up). I promptly put all remaining sandwich cookies into a Ziploc bag and nestled them in the deepest corners of my desk drawers, never to be devoured by me personally anytime soon.
All that to say: 1) They in fact do not all taste the same, and 2) Brand really truly does matter sometimes!
In conjunction with the brands, I thought of shapes. My Roommate (Yes, One), absolutely insists on eating shaped macaroni, and only shaped macaroni. If she were stranded in the arctic a la Christopher MacCandless and had the choice between regular noodle-y macaroni or nothing, she would definitely choose nothing. Perhaps an exaggeration, but only slight. This is where she says, “It doesn’t taste the same.” To me, all Kraft macaroni and cheese tastes the same whether it’s a noodle or some Japanese anime character. But no, to her there is just no exception.
So all of the above was my thought process today when I stood in Safeway, my mother bustling over fresh salmon and how many yogurts she was preparing to buy as we headed towards the dairy section. But there I stood, staring at not one of the above dilemmas, but two. Yes, two.
Did I get the generic store brand macaroni and cheese, or did I get Kraft. What is this world coming to when a 20-year-old has to make these types of decisions in longer than 10 seconds? I don’t know, but the beads of anxiety were appearing on my forehead again as my mom chugged by me with the shopping cart. Once I’d made that decision, did I get regular noodles or prehistoric dinosaur shapes? Pause and think to self, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen prehistoric dinosaur shaped macaroni. Examine box from at least five feet away so that four-year-old in racing car shopping cart by your feet won’t judge you. Avoid eye contact.
My mom looks back at me and I open my mouth to speak but what can I say? The prehistoric dinosaur shapes are too much for me to pass up. So now as I sit here at work, I want you to understand my subtle joy that in this bowl are all sorts of prehistoric creatures that I’m sure long to be eaten just as much as I long to eat them.
And I just wrote an entry about macaroni. Off to better myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment