Another Day, Another Avocado Squeezed.

Please prepare yourself for what is maybe the funniest/most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me. No, really. I think it’s better than when the pen exploded in my mouth and I didn’t know it, better than the situation in Utah last summer.

So there I am at the Trader Joe’s.

I’m passing by the avocados. But wait: I need avocados. I reach my hand over the display to grab a couple and I’m kinda going at this on a diagonal because I want to try and get out of the way of the woman coming from the other direction. She can’t get through until I move.

I make a face like, “Eek, sorry, just a sec,” and the woman says, “You’re fine!”

But then she just stayed there, watching me. It was a lot of pressure. Because you can’t just grab two avocados. You have to select avocados. You have to make sure they’ve ripened to your liking. Me, I like to buy one avocado that is quite firm because it’ll stay good in the fridge for awhile. The other one needs to be soft so I can eat it now, but not too soft so it goes bad before I put it on my dal tadka or whatnot. I’m one person. I can’t eat all these avocados right away. I need to stage my avocados and I’ve done this enough to know to stick to protocol.

How do I find these specific avocados? I squeeze ’em.

So this woman is standing there, not going around me, and I’m squeezing avocados with my thumb and forefinger. Squeeze, squeeze. Nope. Hm. Squeeze, squeeze. But this is weird because she’s watching me. And then, because I apparently cannot let there be a moment of silence ever, I say, “Squeezin’ the avocados!” and my tone is sing-songy and chipper, like I’m saying, “Just doin’ the chores!” to a neighbor because I realize as I’m saying it that “Squeezin’ the avocados” sounds like a euphemism for something and that is not good.

I didn’t stop there. Oh, no.

Because yes, yes indeed, saying, “Squeezin’ the avocados!” as I molested the avocados did sound super creepy, so in .05 seconds I decide to push further into this “I’m just a friendly neighbor at the store! Doin’ the shoppin’!” so I say, “Must be Saturday mornin’!”

Squeezin’ the avocados, must be Saturday mornin. That sentence came out of my mouth. I have never picked avocados faster in my life after that. I still don’t know what I ended up with.

By the time I got to the dairy case, I realized it wasn’t morning at all. It was half-past noon.

Somewhere in Chicago, a woman is shaking her head at her husband and unpacking groceries. She’s telling him how living in a city is really getting to her.