Rotten at the Produce Check-Out, Capucine Berney

Rotten at the Produce Check-Out

I’m standing in line at the Whole Foods on the corner of Barrington and San Vicente. You know, the one with the Starbucks outside, and the unmoving meter that says “look how much money we’ve raised for the environment”? That’s the one. So, I’m standing in line, minding my own business, about to pay for my organically-grown-low-calorie-freeze-dried-strawberries-that-are-still-raw. In line. Like a normal person. And then they’re there. It’s like she teleported right in front of my face: this amazing, juicy, well-rounded, ripe girl, and she’s carrying apples— the apples. The ones on sale. From Fiji. I know. Why didn’t I get the apples? I love apples. I am an apple person. Apples are my life. Literally, my entire life has been shaped so that I could be here, right now, presented with the plump fruit and I pick the freeze-dried strawberries. I’m an idiot. Who am I? “Pounce, Andie, pounce,” I tell myself, “jump on it!” But I can’t. You know why? I know why. You know that girl? That one with the ripeness and the luscious mane? She looks like my dad. Chick looks like my dad. My dad looks like a chick. He’s got this new thing going, okay? He calls it the “Beachy Bob.” That’s his name: Bob. That’s what he wants his hair to look like: the beach. What’s a guy like Bob doing with a three-foot, shimmering, grayed at the roots, platinum blonde extension of his scalp? I couldn’t tell you. Why are we related? Genetic mishap. What the heck, Bob? Dad. Father. Person. He’s all: “I’m not having a midlife crisis, I’m just trying to live.” And then I notice his mustache, and he’s all “It’s not a mustache, it’s a butch-stache.” I’m watching the little filaments on my father’s butch-stache ride up and down as he convinces me that he isn’t scared of death, and then he returns to his online poker game.

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I’m like: “Dad, that’s where you go when you hit your midlife and you think you’re seeing little demons of death. You go to online poker.” “Hang on,” he tells me, “I’m about to beat Jeff from North Carolina, and we have to beat the Confederates. Andie, our nation is in a Civil War—a war of the people. It’s online. Cyber Monday. Facebook popularity. I have sixteen friends, your mother has twelve. Who’s winning that one? I am. If poker Jeff from North Carolina thinks he and his slave-holding people are going to beat me, a strong, Union, Vermont-loving, esteemed online poker player, husband and father, well he’s wrong. He’s just wrong.” So, I can’t buy the apples, because my father probably buys apples.

Capucine Berney ’13

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