Tactile:  The Mad Sniffer…

 

Is me.  Maybe. 

 

I went shopping for some fresh produce, wanting some vegetables for salad and fruit for nibbling out of hand.  I’m merciless about checking the produce; we eat so much of it in this household that it’d better be damned good before I drop a dime on it.  Produce is more than 25% of our grocery budget.

 

Summer will find me at the farm market, buying from the locally growers.  During the winter I have a couple of stores I frequent for produce since they seem to have the best quality, selection and better managed stock rotation.  One is much more expensive than the other, but it’s also located close to my kid’s school.  They got the nod since I needed to kill time before picking up my child at the end of the school day.

 

There I am, groping the apples, pears, kiwis, weeding through the leafy goods, when I notice grapes are plentiful and on sale.  Hmm, Chilean.  Typical for this time of year.

 

And I’m certain they’ve been fumigated or sprayed or treated somewhere along the line.  .

 

Unfortunately, organic grapes are scarce here even in the local growing season; my kids love them, I’ll have to buck up and buy some and wash them thoroughly if I’m going to make them happy.  So I sniff them.  I sniff little stretchy cello bags of black, red and green grapes to find one package that reeks the least of pesticide.  These green ones will need scrubbing, but I’ll chance it; they look good.  A final sniff to seal my choice.

 

Mid-sniff, I feel someone nearby, watching.  It’s the grocery department clerk, coming with a fresh batch of grapes to add to the stand.  Her eyebrows are in her hairline, the grapes in her hand hovering above the cart, frozen in mid-air between the cart and the stand.  I’m reading her mind: What in the hell…?  Now what?

 

Good God, yes, it’s the mad sniffer in action.  She has NO clue what I’m doing, sees me as some demented freak.  Maybe I am demented, unhinged after years of exposure to inhaled pesticides.  Maybe.

 

I answer the unspoken question, feeling a little sheepish for some reason.  And more than a bit puzzled, too.  You know these grapes have been treated with a pesticide, don’t you?  She say, No, really?  Omigod, it never even occurred to her, I can see it in her face.

 

She’s handling, touching, intimate with this food stuff everyday and she can’t smell it?  I can, some of these bags reek at arm’s length of something inorganic, something sharper than the sweetish chemical smell of the polyethylene bags in which they’re packed.

 

Yeah, I pick fruits that that smell the least, especially grapes.  California strawberries are the worst, though; they have the most chemical content in them of any fruit.  Uh-oh, her eyebrows are in her hairline again.  Not a good sign.  TMI, I think, Too Much Information. 

 

She slowly raises a bag of grapes to her nose, not taking her eyes off me.  Tenative whiff, then big deep sniff.  Oh, she exhales, wrinkling her nose. 

 

I pick up the bag of green grapes that I deemed least odiferous.  The red and black were redolent, reeking of the stuff. 

 

The clerk puzzles a bit, now staring at the whole stand of grapes and the new cart, looking at them with new eyes.  She pipes up, helpfully: We have Florida strawberries in, if you’d rather have those than the California ones. 

 

Gee, thanks, I’ll take a look at them.  We eat them occasionally, but I don’t know how much pesticides there are in Florida-grown versus California.  The berries sit on the ground and tend to sit in whatever may have been sprayed on them, soaking up residue. 

 

Leaving her to head for the berries, she continues to stare at the grapes.  Like they’ll get up and bite her or something if she’s not careful.

 

On approach to the strawberries, I check the sign above the stand.  Doesn’t say “Florida Strawberries”, just “Fresh Strawberries” in a quaint handwritten flourish on a chalkboard.  So reassuring, that investment of handwriting.  Moving in closer, I check the label on the clear plastic container.  “Product of Mexico”, it says in small green print. 

 

I walked away slowly towards the check out, never touching the strawberries.  I didn’t look back.

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