This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
I was wandering the aisles of the supermarket looking for an idea when I discovered a surprisingly good selection of fresh ingredients to make Salsa. As I gathered my items I resolved to keep the spiciness toned down, for I had been warned of midwesterners' notoriously sensitive pallets. I swung around to the snacks section and picked out some wonderful looking corn chips, and headed to the checkout in a very pleased state.
The express lane was attended by a gum chewing sixteen year old girl. She had meticulously styled hair, brightly painted nails, and slung one shoulder low in a defiant stance. She clearly wanted to be someplace else, and wasn't afraid to give that impression. My presence wasn't even acknowledged as she continued to page through a tabloid in a bored kind of way. I stacked my items on the conveyor.
The first item she picked up was my bag of jalapeno peppers. She regarded them for a moment, and then asked "Uh, what are these?" "Jalapeno peppers," I told her. She began flipping through the little price book attached to the side of the cash register, fervently chewing her gum. I noticed that she was looking through the 'H's, and said "Um... that's 'jalapeno' with a 'J'." Now she regarded me for a moment, her chewing unabated, and then turned her attention to the 'J's, where she found 'jalapeno', shrugged, and rung them up.
As fate would have it, she next picked up the cilantro. "Is this some kinda parsley or somthin'?" she asked, clearly demonstrating her growing annoyance at my predilection for items outside of the meat-and-potato realm. "No," I said, "that's cilantro." She turned her attention back to her price book, except this time she was studying the 'S's. "Excuse me," I offered weakly "but 'cilantro' is spelled with a 'C'." She stopped chewing for a moment and stared at me with cynical eyes. "With a 'C'?" she asked with raised, perfectly tweezed eyebrows. "Well, yeah." She found the price quickly and keyed it into her machine disgustedly.
The next item she grasped was my bag of beautifully ripe tomatoes. She looked at me, studied the tomatoes for a moment, and then looked at me again. Trying to be helpful, I said "With a 'T'." She didn't appreciate the help. Her brows furrowed and I could tell that she was squeezing the life out of the rosy, delicate vegetables. "I know that," she spat, "I even know how much they are." When I got them home I discovered that they were terribly bruised, covered with fingertip sized indentations.
She finished ringing up my other couple of items and I paid her. She looked at my small pile of groceries and asked "Do you wanna a bage?" "A what?" I asked. "A bage," she repeated. "No, that's O.K." I said, not having any clue what a bage was or why a person would want one. She looked at my pile again, and I did too. "Could I have a bag though?" I asked. This pissed her off, and her gum chewing became an staccato of intensity. What I hadn't realized, having only been in Wisconsin a short while , is that all the short 'A's had left the midwest a century before and had migrated east, and that words like "bag" and "tag" and "hag" were pronounced like "bage" and "tage" and "hage". She practically slammed my items into a bag, not daring to risk giving me the choice between paper or plastic, and I slipped out, relieved that I had passed over the rather tasty looking Jicama.