Summer People Vs. Cheese

Summer people aren’t used to shopping like regular people. In fact, some of them don’t appear to be used to shopping for anything at all, except perhaps their next wealthy spouse. They expect to hand over a list to a clerk in any store – grocery store, hardware store, WalMart – and have the clerk hunt and gather for them while they clack their French-manicured nails on their smartphones and tap their Prada-shod toes impatiently, as if to say, “It never takes this long when I send Rosita out to do the shopping.”

So Dean’s in the grocery store checkout line. It’s Friday afternoon so it’s extra-busy, with all the regulars, the summer people, weekend people and vacationers passing through. Lines are long and the clerks are checking them out as fast as they can. A summer woman walks up to the harried check-out clerk and says “show me your cheese.”

Clerk: “Cheese is at the back of the store, straight up aisle three.”

Summer woman: “Come and show me!”

Clerk: “I’m afraid I can’t. I’m checking these people out.”

Summer woman’s expression says exactly what she thinks of both the clerk and “these people.”

Summer woman: “I can’t find your cheese. Come and show me where it is.”

The clerk’s starting to look desperate but she sees a free bagger. “Bob, can you show her where the cheese is?”

Bob walks to the back of the store and both he and summer woman are back in a moment, with her giving him a lecture on all things cheese-related. “I saw THAT cheese, but surely that can’t be all you have? That’s just . . . just . . .” cheese-related terminology failed her for a moment and then she found the dreadful adjective suitable for this occasion. “That’s just REGULAR cheese.” Bob’s shrugging an apology for the regular-ness of the cheese section as she rattles off some type of artisanal cheese that she MUST HAVE. Poor Bob can only shrug.

A couple of years ago I joked about summer people wanting artisanal cheese salted with the tears of the poor. I thought I was kidding.