Yelling Even Louder About Expensive Smoothies (Continuation of Last Week's Story)

There was one incident from my escapade to Erewhon with my father that I failed to mention (read “Yelling About Expensive Smoothies” to get the scoop). If you recall, my dad and I went to Erewhon together a couple weeks ago because he had read about its exorbitant prices in the newspaper and wanted to witness it first had. So we went. He spent the entire time yelling at me about the prices of things and I spent my time either recoiling in embarrassment, or rubbing my hands excitedly as I watched others squirm in discomfort.

One instance that I particularly enjoyed was when he was shouting about the $56.99 olive oil.

“Roy, ROY!” I skidaddled to a neighboring aisle and hid amongst the organic vegetables. “The olive oil is…56.99 DOLLARS! Unbeleebable! I get olive oil triple size than this, for 8.99 dollars from Costco! I guess this one is liquid gold!” A lady with a cart full of oils and creams who was a few feet from my dad at the time fled the aisle. I assumed she was fleeing because she thought my dad was crazy and felt her life was in danger. Then, I noticed something interesting.

She looked in her basket, digging past packages of $19.99/lb organic okra, a $17 jug of Greek yogurt, and miscellaneous ointments, then grabbed the bottle of olive oil my dad was yelling about and looked at it for a few seconds.

Is she checking the ingredient list for liquid gold? I thought.

Then, she looked up and stared blankly into the distance. Moments later, she snapped out of her trance, then returned to the aisle and put the olive oil back on the shelf.  

I peeked through the boxes of hand-picked organic strawberries to see what she was up to and to make sure my dad wasn’t scaring her. “I don’t know why I keep buying these,” she confessed to my dad about the olive oil. I used to buy the Costco one and I liked those.” She kept talking with him about her upbringing, her marriage, her unruly Erewhon spending sprees. My dad would respond with comments like, “Have you been to Trader Joe’s? That place is expensive too” and “I like the face creams at Ross, they have good ones.” Then she said, “keep yelling about this stuff. You’re bound to wake someone up.” They hugged and parted ways.

“Sounds like you changed her life,” I told my dad. My dad, being fully deaf from his right ear said “I didn’t understand a word she said. She kept talking in my right ear.”