Free Cheddar Nation

The thing I hate most about supermarkets are those free sample displays that are scattered all over those random corners of the store. They usually throw the samples into plastic containers where tiny bits of cheddar cheese are divided into dozens of even tinnier pieces of crud. Don’t get me wrong, those things taste pretty good and they are free, but what about that very fundamental issue of personal hygiene?

When you charge people for things, they show no shame in displaying just how truly anal they are. Did any of you pay any sort of attention to how people order their coffee drinks in any of those chain coffee shops? Maybe it is just a New York City thing. Maybe it just has to do with those characters who live on the upper east side. But I mean, come on, where do these people come from? Only this morning I saw one of those socialites order a cup of coffee. Actually it was not coffee the way she ordered it. It was more like a advanced placement science project.

I’ll have a skinny latte macchiato, half caf, half decaf with soy foam and please, make sure it is at 125 degrees, I don’t like it when my coffee is lukewarm, she explained.

That’s how she drinks her coffee this woman does. How the poor Puerto Rican kid behind the counter even figured that one out? God bless his soul.

So apparently, when we pay for things, we all allow ourselves to become complete pains in the ass, but when it comes to the free stuff, the rules adjust.

Just before I reached over for some of that old yellow fermented stuff, I noticed a corpulent woman who stuffed her overburdening fingers into the plastic container and took not one nor two but about six tiny squares and just scooped them out of the sample tray and straight into her hungry blowhole.

She was a foul one that woman was but not nearly as disgusting as that skinny awkward Minnesota type who stood over six feat tall and was wearing his torn Twins T-Shirts that he likely bought during their last playoff run more than two decades ago.

To say that this guy abused the very concept of a sampling display would be the understatement of the year. This guy was out for the kill. He seemed to believe with all of his Midwestern heart that there was such a thing as a free lunch and it took place right here on aisle 12 of the Megamart.

The guy had a system. He pretended to be sampling, not eating. Or at least, that was his apparent rational. But his system was as foolish as that red and yellow Gophers cap that he sported on his head. He took three pieces every time and then he would take a break and let the next person in line sample a piece for himself.

Pretty good cheese, he would say and then reach over for another sample. The way he saw it I suppose was not that he was a free cheese hog but rather a good neighbor and ambassador for the Cheddar cheese nation.

The sizeable woman and the tall Norwegian held conversation for several minutes while stuffing themselves on free yellow cheddar.

You realize of course, he told her, that not all cheese is actually made from cow’s milk. You have such varieties as Acapella and Humboldt Fog that are made out of goat milk. There is buffalo cheese, cheese made from the milk of camels, mare, yak and even lamas.

I never really knew that, she seemed to be embarrassed. To be perfectly honest, she confessed that she was somewhat lactose intolerant and was not a huge fan of the yellow stuff.

So why are you eating from this display of Cheddar? He was curious to know.

Well, you know, it is free so I just figured what the heck.

They continued to talk about cheese and milk and cows and camels and then walked over together to the meat department where they served free sampled of Bavarian sausages.

If those only knew, those people, I thought to myself that right before they came around, I stuck my hands into those piles of cheddar.

If they only realized how I stood there so compact and sweaty inside that downtown Nine train holding on to those very hand rails that so many thousands of other perspiring New Yorkers held on to every day in search of balance.

Ten minutes earlier I walked into the super store where I noticed free sample trays of Cheddar cheese. After throwing my hands all around the piles of food, I realized that I was likely carrying thousands of miniature colonies of Staphylococcus who were forming their troops in preparation of an imminent invasion of some poor man or woman’s large intestine.

So filthy were my hands that I decided to wash them both before and after urination. As I returned to the sample tray I noticed a large woman who stood besides a tall man. The two were devouring the free samples of cheese that were by now as polluted as the toxic waters of the Hudson river.

This is the main problem with people, I thought to myself, they could never resist anything if it was given to them for free.

Next time you walk into the whole food store, think about personal hygiene, think about tall Norwegian men and fat woman who chew away the free fat of life without knowledge of what came before.

The young woman who stood at the cash register had long streams of brunette hairs that were flowing down the path of her shoulder.

It has been more than a month since Sylvia and I last spoke on the phone.

God I miss that woman.

Hard Boiled Men