This morning, I stopped by the market and asked the young man at the deli counter for two slices of turkey ham (which The Squire calls “sham”) to fix as ham steaks for tomorrow’s dinner. The young man held up the piece of meat and positioned his knife about an inch and a half from the end. “Is this about right?”
“No! That’s much too thick.” I put up my thumb and index finger to show him what I wanted. He again positioned his knife way too far from the end, so I finally asked him the give me the knife, and I scored the “skin” of the meat to show him where it should be cut. “I want two slices that thick.”
He held up a slab of meat about an inch thick. “Is this OK?” Well, it wasn’t, but I’d already spent too much time on this project. “Do they teach fractions in school any more?”
“Huh?”
I hate to say it, but I’d have been better off with somebody from The ARC.
When I checked out, the cashier looked askance at the hunk of “sham” I had, so I told her about my adventures in Deli-land.
Which led, in turn, to me recounting an episode, long ago and far away, with a young cashier in another store. The Squire and I had loaded our order onto the belt, and we had to identify almost every single item we had purchased.
“What’s this stuff?”
“Celery” “Radishes” “Zucchini” “Radicchio” “Cauliflower”
And, then, the lights came on! “I know these”, he said, proudly holding up the bag of potatoes.
“This is what they use to make French Fries!”
thisendoftheswamp 