On this episode of “Let’s Get Real”…You are what you eat, right? So lately I’m thinking about identity, and identity crises. Who are we, as American individuals and as a nation? Who gets in, who gets to stay? Do you have to drink a Big Gulp as part of the US Citizen swearing in ceremony now? Because along with the written test, I’d definitely fail both parts then.
Yeah, all kinds of deep stuff has been going through my head..I have a lot of time on my hands lately, and I’ve been stretching my weekends out to 3 or 4 days up in the bungalow, to get in as much hiking and swimming and grilling and berry picking and gardening as I possibly can, before the cold winds of winter start to blow and we’re watching A Charlie Brown Xmas yet again.
Now, you all know about my friend Ida, who’s somewhere upwards of 70 but will never tell her true age because she’s an ol’ skool real lady. Ida doesn’t drive, so I take her grocery shopping and thrift store shopping and Big Lots shopping on the weekend. She never buys much, but she likes to look around, and browse, much like me. I call it research. So Ida and I head to our local ShopRite, which she likes better than Stop and Shop, which I prefer, although frankly, compared to the food and produce shopping in Brooklyn, they are both a joke.
So we walk into Shop Rite and Ida accidentally steals some other old lady’s cart, and then is yelled at by said old lady, which I find hilarious for some reason, and then I notice a display of Chips Ahoy! cookies and get distracted.
Not because I want them. They’re Chips Ahoy!, which I’ve never really loved because chocolate chip cookies are supposed to be chewy and soft with a crisp edge, not hard and crumbly and crunchy. If I WERE to buy chocolate chip cookies, they’d probably be Entennmans, which back in the venn diagram days of High School stonerhood were a staple on our metaphorical cafeteria table in my social circle. No, my foodiness-seeking eye was drawn to these particular Chips Ahoy!, because they were flavored. You know how bent I get about flavorings, and not just flavorings, but total identity transplantation flavorings, like birthday-cake flavored vodka and girlscout cookie flavored coffee creamer in jelly-donut flavored coffee. You know, that stuff. it goes beyond flavors, its trans-species identity disordering! its like taking the personality of a squirrel and placing it in the body of a jellyfish. its messing with the natural order of things! Like mock duck made of wheat gluten!! You can’t mess with nature, and the way it is meant to be, right? These particular Chips Ahoy! were flavored with…well, you’ll just have to listen to find out, but it’s really, truly horrifying and I tell some good stories and its funny and everything so tune in…And oh yeah, don’t eat sh*t! Especially if it’s pretending to be a cookie.