When I was young, my grandparents went to the supermarket on Friday evenings. Each week we'd get a big bag of pretzels. They'd last the whole week. We almost never bought potato chips. See, we liked them too much. If we got a bag of potato chips, it would be gone in three days. So we got pretzels instead.
(Two bags of potato chips? In the same week? Inconceivable.)
We had Annajane over for dinner at Nanna's yesterday. There was a bit of fuss about the coffee ice cream that Nanna had bought for Annajane back in January: would it still be edible? It was, and Annajane was happy—she says the food at her new nursing home is horrible. But we got talking about ice cream in general. Nanna complained how Ricky always eats "all of that good Haagen-Dazs, the dulsee letchee stuff," so she never gets any.
It sounded like Nanna and Ricky are getting into the same situation with ice cream flavors as we all were with salty snacks way back when: now they both like the dulce de leche, it's getting too stressful to buy it. So I told Nanna the story about the pretzels.
Nanna blinked. No sign of recognition, let alone awareness of personal involvement. "Well, that sounds like a good idea to me, " she ventured. "To get the pretzels."
After we dropped Annajane back at the home, Ricky (who had missed the earlier conversation) and I stopped at the supermarket, where he got some dulce de leche. He dropped me off at the apartment building. "Emmie, could you put the ice cream in the freezer? And don't let Nanna see it. I couldn't help I got such a big one—they didn't have any normal size ones, and I like it so much."
He knew Nanna would be annoyed at his having gotten the quart. Because a quart is too much. Just like two bags of potato chips.
Comments