Dear Bag Of Lettuce: I Am At My Most Full Of Shit When I Buy You

Dear Bag of Lettuce:

I am at my most full of shit when I buy you. We both know this. Your purchase is peak optimism.

There you are looking all green and fresh, and here I am all hangry and clueless among the produce stacks begging for someone else to guide the meal-planning way. Because I can’t even this week. Like every other week I’m here.

I would rather be doing anything else right now. And I do mean anything. So I grab you thinking side salad works with everything, and everything will be determined as I go through each aisle in a state of confusion and panic that we need to eat every single day for the rest of our lives, multiple times a day. And I guess I’m in charge of this shit.

If I ever strike it moderately wealthy, the first thing I am purchasing is a white male maid. And I plan on paying him a woman’s wage while he buys my bags of salad that I probably won’t eat.

I’m Sally in the diner, banging on the table in front of Harry, orgasmic over this opulent misandry dream. It makes me want to grind a bit harder knowing what’s on the other side.

But no, I’m here, at the grocery store, staring at the Dole bags or the off-brand generic; side-eying the organic heads like, pipe down organic. I hear your politics, and I raise you an IDGAF. My debit card does not have time for you.

Or for the people who insist they can self checkout but have no clue what they’re doing because the scanner is a scale people. It’s a scale! Every time someone stares blankly at a screen, turns their head to the overseer of People-Who-Don’t-Know-How-to-Self-Checkout, I die a little on the inside. Self-checkout is the place where your time is incrementally murdered by people with a false sense of confidence in their intelligence.

Curse this sanitarium-lighting nightmare full of Billy Ocean pumped through the speakers and bagged salad I’ll most definitely forget about in the crisper drawer until it’s time to do this all over again.

I will forget. It’s almost a certainty. My crisper drawers are not translucent and the hearts of romaine will be left to decompose into the muck of a seaweed-looking slush I’ll eventually pull out with my face turned to the side, arms extended out, bag of green goo pinched between my two fingers, and “eww, gross” coming out of my mouth as I slam dunk the filth into my trash can.

I had the best of intentions, I will say to myself. Like it matters.

It does not.

We will meet again, dear bag of lettuce, know this. I will buy you next week or the week thereafter, and we will dance together in a “Will I, or Won’t I?” tango until you become a Creature From the Black Lagoon remake, or maybe, just maybe, I’ll remember you and feel unnecessarily accomplished as I add a splash of caesar, some croutons, and a sprinkling of parmesan. But probably not. This is me we’re talking about. And I’m at my most full of shit with my produce aisle relationships.