Gene's trip to the store...

Ang is usually the one who writes on here but I decided to tell this little tale of my trip to the grocery store today. I hadn't had a chance to get to the grocery store for a while and decided to walk into town and pick up a few things until I get to the larger grocery stores a few towns away. I was dressed my usual Gene way except I had a rain coat on since it was raining and a Bears hat on since my Cardinal hat needed washed.

I went for the walk to the store, passing a group of teens who don't know the difference between a Cubs and a Bears hat as they said something about the Cubs to me in French. Usually I would give a smart ass response or get mad but I remembered Europeans refer to soccer as football so I just took it as they were a little slow upstairs, you know...like the Cubs.

Hemmingway, I got to the store and picked up my items of discounted salad, a 4# bag of oranges, and garlic, all good to have in case Ang turns into a Vitamin C deficient vampire. (garlic or salad can be used to ward her off, but I digest. Where was I? Shopping.)

I walked over to the cheese case and heard an older lady next to me complain in English about the cheese selections changing from COOP store to COOP store. I said I understood cause I can only find cheddar cheese in Crissier and was looking here just to see if they happen to have it. The lady, British of origin and who's top of her head came up to my shoulder, looked at me and asked if I was an American. I said yes and then we started talking cheese and frustrations on finding certain types (exciting, I know). She then asked me if I spoke French and when I said no she proceeded to track down an employee and asked them if they had cheddar cheese, which she had a hard time believing they didn't have. After a couple minutes of them going back and forth talking (including me giving a description of the size, shape and density of the cheddar cheese in question) they concluded there was no cheddar there. I thanked her for her help and the lady left, needing to track down her husband whom she thought had left her.

I continued walking through the store and decided I had what I needed so I headed toward the check-out counters. Just so happen, I walked down an aisle where the lady was standing again. She looked at me and said in her slight British accent, "Come with me. I must show you to my husband." She then grabbed my elbow and lead me to the checkout line where her husband was unloading the cart. As we approached, she said to him, once again in her British accent, "Look what I found...a large American looking for cheddar." (Was this her Jane Goodall moment or just regular show-and-tell? Sure I was well taller than her and her husband and outweighed both of them but large? Hmmm. Maybe I should have bought more salad. Anyway...) Her husband turned out to be a nice Swiss man named Victor, who was certain that cheddar cheese may be found in England, not in Switzerland, although he did conceed the large stores in Crissier might have it. We said our goodbyes again and I left them to check out and me to find an open lane.

I was still replaying the whole "... a large American looking for cheddar" thing as I walked back to the apartment. More I walked, the funnier it got for me and Ang really enjoyed it as I retold it, with appropriate accents. Never knew meeting "... a large American looking for cheddar" was the European equivalent of seeing a unicorn or finding the end of the rainbow, or at least in my case, finding a penny on a sidewalk.

Well, I have typed enough here. Need to go eat another salad.

Gene