Candid Camera

A few days ago my wife and I were on candid camera. I mean, no one popped out and told us that we were on candid camera. We saw no actual cameras. We signed no release forms. Nonetheless, we were able to infer our participation in the show through sheer observatory skill. Let me relate the experience, I am sure you will agree.

Linda and I went to an unnamed new grocery store that recently opened in our neck of the woods. We don't want to name the grocery store lest we give this particular one a bad review. Let's just say the name rhymes with "zygmans".

So we did our grocery shopping and came to the checkout counter. Now, we had never been to "zygmans" before, and it carried alot of wonderful food that is just not available at our regular grocery store. We wound up purchasing quite a bit of stuff, which meant we were checking out for a reasonable amount of time, which led to our inevitable spot on candid camera.

Our checkout clerk was either high as a kite or had just jumped off the plane from the California surfer mellow-yet-verbose competition. Great and deep apologies to those Californians who I know read this blog. Blame Hollywood, not me, for the stereotype.

We purchased some red peppers. This was, apparently, the greatest event in this young cashier's life...

Cashier: Wow. Red peppers are, like, great. You can eat them raw, cooked. Just do your thing. Like salads, oh yeah, do you eat salads? Put some in your salad, or like, stir fry. Chinese food is terrific. I bought my sister a wok for Christmas, well, a wok and chopsticks. She was like "ok..." but, you know, I like this kind of food, so it's all good, right?

We had alot of groceries. We had alot of monologues. I'll skip the retelling of the pampered chef parties, making your own sushi, and vodka mixers. Suffice it to say that we not only purchased food, we purchased a front-seat view into our cashier's psyche.

The punch line? While rolling the cart to the car Linda commented on how it seemed like we had alot of bags. As we were putting the bags in the trunk we noticed that the bags seemed very light. So, we looked inside.

In one bag was a single red bell papper. In another bag was a single block of cheese. In another bag was every thing we bought that was made of glass.

Who puts one red pepper in a bag?

We waited for a few minutes in the parking lot for the camera crew to jump out at us but that never happened. So we came to the most obvious conclusion: we were just too good looking to be put on television.

-Ed