I should have known better than to only bring four bags on my one trip to the grocery store last week. My pulse quickened as I saw the large container of watermelon. I’d normally pick through them, melon after melon, until I found the roundest, heaviest, most hollow-sounding fruit with the biggest yellow patch. But maybe that isn’t allowed anymore, I worried. Is the produce section “you touch it, you buy it” now that COVID-19 means we don’t touch people or things that other people have touched?
Though you don’t need to worry about getting Coronavirus from food itself, (even raw food – just wash it, with water, not soap, and don’t share utensils with other people), I still wondered about the etiquette of breathing on every single watermelon as I raised it to my ear to knock on it.
So I stared blankly at the bin of watermelon for a minute while considering the moral quandary. I’d washed my hands before entering the store, like everyone else, so they were clean. But if someone else – someone with longer fingernails than me, for example – had been picking through the melons or tomatoes or avocados (which are apparently still seeing strong sales, despite some consumer trepidation about squeezing the fruit), would I have veered away?
But people had probably already picked through them earlier than day, maybe even a few minutes before I got there, and I just hadn’t seen them, so it’s irrational to not buy those fruit just because you didn’t see someone. Plus I’d wash the fruit at home before eating it and I’d wash my hands again at the store exit and after unpacking my produce at home.
Just as I was about to reach out for the first, green-and yellow sphere, I paused again. What about social judgement: the angry looks and wrinkled anxious brows of other customers who hadn’t spent the last minute going through the ethics?
I considered giving up. It was the first watermelon shipment of the season, so they probably weren’t that sweet. They were probably picked weeks ago in arrive in time for impatient spring picnic-ers. How times have changed. Picnics for one?
But the price was good. And it’d be a long week or two at home before I’d be back, so I caved and started knocking. I found the biggest, heaviest and most yellow-spotted melons and sorted them into a pile, then I re-knocked on those. I think I touched every watermelon, but nobody said a word as I finally transferred my first choice to my cart. Then I hesitated and grabbed my second choice, too. It was going to be a long week, and I might as well stock up rather go through this again.
I lugged those watermelons home, washed one and cut my first slice. convinced it’d be mediocre. But it was perfect – pure, sugary juice. For a moment, I felt as though I was on a sunny picnic blanket, far away from my chilly Montreal kitchen with a freak, end-of-season hail storm outside my window.
As I took another bite, all I could think was thank goodness I bought two watermelons.
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