Shopping

The 99 cent cheese did not melt. 4 minutes on high in a toaster oven would have melted any other cheese, but I wasn’t concerned. It was from an all-generics company whose other products I like, and anyway it’s processed cheese.

Likewise I can live with the pharmaceutical-like ingredients and putty-like slices and unnatural luminosity and strangely distant expiration date. Not really that much worse than the 4-times more expensive brand versions. Granted, the brands would have melted.

But I was afraid the product would be pulled and felt I had to act to protect my supply so I sent the president of the company an email: “Your cheese makes me fart like the wind but is otherwise excellent. Add Vitamin D sprinkles and rebrand as Bone Cheese With Lactose-X11, fiscal 2015 will be lyrical.” No response but two weeks later I noticed a Ford Taurus opposite the grocery with 3 men in gabardine suits who appeared to be watching me through the store window. I confronted them on my way out and after I threatened them they claimed they were consultants hired by the rival supermarket chain to “estimate the percentage of shoppers who are hunched over and dejected.”

I stopped going to that store but the following week in the rival grocery I paused in front of the cheese section and whimsically put the brand processed cheese in my cart instead of the generic, then stood there smiling as if I were an actor in an important cheese movie. An attractive lady in a gabardine pant suit came around the corner a little fast and rammed her cart into mine. She smiled and said “So sorry” then she saw the brand cheese in my cart. She looked me in the eyes and said, “That’s expensive cheese.”

I surprised myself and said “Yes I can afford it now because last week I threatened some strangers and things have changed for me.” Indeed from that day forward I shopped at the rival grocery and tried to eat healthier and farted more or less normally. Gabardine attire fills me with rage and doubt but net-net I’m a winner. Tuesday I meet with the brilliant cheese taster at Nature’s Bitch, the hip new organic grocery, who preaches that we’re in a war of attrition with enzymes. He used to work at Whole Foods but Nature’s Bitch doubled his salary and gave him a 3% interest in a well-regarded faux Stilton producer that uses innovative milk-price swaps to stabilize their milk costs.