Well, I have to apologize to everyone: no 12 of 12 this month.  There’s a reason, and you can see it in my 11:55 am twitter exchange with Cheap Blue Guitar here.  Next month, I promise.

However, if I can delve back into stories relating to last week for a moment, I have to share the best way I’ve found to meet total strangers: put 15 rotisserie chickens in your shopping cart!

Slight backstory: when we were trying to figure out food for the reception after the funeral mass on Friday, Rodney and I came up with tacos — they’re easy to prepare. Basically, you need meat, tortillas, cheese, lettuce, and salsa — and you really only need to lay everything out and let the diners serve themselves.  At first, we had talked about trying to cook the chicken ourselves, but after a while Rodney announced, “No, let’s just get some rotisserie chickens and shred them.  It’ll be easier.”

Tuesday night, we went off to Sam’s Club to start buying supplies and place an order for the chicken, which I said I’d come get around noon on Thursday.  I was very specific about saying “around noon,” because usually when you schedule a pickup like that you’ve got a window–especially when you want to let the stuff cool so you can shred it.  At noon, I was in the midst of chopping up peppers and onions that I’d grilled to go on top of the tacos.  My plan was to finish up the chopping and head to get the chicken.

(Side note: this gives me unimaginable glee because I worked for some years with a woman who insisted that she had a self-diagnosed food allergy to bell peppers and onions, and had to reiterate this every time we were on a business trip and were debating lunch options–she would interject that we couldn’t go for Mexican because of her allergy.  Well, that and she declared Tex Mex food “inauthentic.”  She had problems.  For several years afterward, Natalie and I would go out of our way to order as many things with peppers and onions in them just because she was such a pill about it.)

Around 12:30, the phone rang.  I picked it up and resumed chopping.

“Hello?” I said.
“Who’s this?” nb — this was my cell phone.
“Chris.  Who’s this?”
“Did you place an order?” demanded a shrill voice on the other end.
“For …?”
“Chicken.  Did you place an order for chicken?”
“Yes.”
“Well, are you going to come get them??” she yelled.
“Yes, I was planning to leave here in a minute.”
“Well, we don’t have anywhere to put them, and if you don’t come get them, we’re going to set them out and customers are going to take them, and you’re just going to have to wait for them to cook whenever you get here.”
(putting the knife down.)  “OK, I’ll be right there.”

So, thus scolded for daring to force the butcher counter at Sam’s Club to retain my chicken for 30 minutes, I set off, hoping desperately that whoever I met at the store wouldn’t be the person who had called.

I arrived at the warehouse 10 minutes later, collected my cart, and went to the counter.  There was, in fact, space for the birds, and, while I think the woman who helped me load them was the one who called, she was much nicer.

“Planning a wedding?” she asked.
“Funeral,” I responded.

This was the first of many interactions I would have with total strangers on my way to the front of the store regarding the contents of my shopping cart.  There were many different kinds of opening lines.

There were those who seemed to be under the impression that I didn’t actually know what was in my cart: “Hey, you’ve got a lot of chicken there.”  Perhaps they thought that I’d only meant to pick up one chicken, and the other 14 had fallen into the cart without my noticing.

There were the folks who were more direct: “What’s with all the chicken?”

There were the people who didn’t actually address me, but seemed to have no issue with talking about me loudly and right in front of me: “OMG, did you see that guy with all the chicken in his cart??”

Then, of course … there were the comedians.

“New fad diet?” I was asked.  The problem here was that I was distracted and didn’t have a ready “and” to present: “Yes, it’s a diet where you eat only chicken and ___.”  (An all-chicken diet isn’t believable, now, is it?)  I considered jalapeños, fava beans, shiitake mushrooms, and beer, but none of them seemed appropriate.

“Where’s the party?” was another.  I’m too nice to just say, “You’re not invited,” but …

I did, eventually, make it out of the store.  But it got me thinking that maybe I’ve found the next best thing in speed dating — instead of putting a bunch of strangers in a room, I’ll send them to Sam’s Club with copious amounts of one product in their shopping carts and they can walk around and strike up conversations.  Man, when crab legs meets zucchini, sparks could fly!

“Grandma, how did you and Grandpa meet?”
“Well, sonny, he had a bunch of panty hose in his cart, and I had four solar powered attic fans.  It was love at first sight.”

I’m copyrighting this — don’t get any idears, there, kids.

Also … I’m eating fish for a while :/