Organic blueberries, just $1.99 a pint. A full flat for $16.99. For just one day. Imagine the number of people – a whole city’s worth – eating blueberries on the same day. I could walk in to just about any household, up and down the street, and there I’d find someone in the kitchen with their pint or flat of blueberries. Baking cobblers, pies, crisps, blending smoothies, mixing them with mounds of yogurt or cottage cheese, plopping a dollop of crème fraiche on top, studding morning cereal bowls, savoring them with small squares of dark chocolate. Or, for others, resting the container on the counter, wondering what on earth to do with the blueberries.
People who shop at markets that offer predominantly local, organic, small farm, health conscious, ecologically-friendly, politically correct coffee beans and corn chips with no hydrogenated oils, whose dairy aisle has an abundance of milk from every possible source (from rice, soy, coconut, almonds, sheep and goats, and, for the curmudgeons out there, cows, although we can now get unpasteurized cow’s milk, too, and lactose-free milk and calcium-enriched milk and . . .) forcing consumers to boldly, stubbornly, choose “cow’s milk” if they just want something cold to wash down their organic chocolate cake, whereas you used to be able to pour yourself a glass of milk and be done with it), green packaging – these folks tend to think of themselves as independent thinkers, those who strive to do the best for themselves and their families. Those who stand firm against the mainstream forces of corporate conglomerates, resist the pull of advertising and marketing agencies to draw people into mindless consumerism.
Yet there I was, in the check out aisle, with my pint of blueberries, knowing full well I didn’t need blueberries. We had a pint at home. My son doesn’t like blueberries. I don’t have time to bake enough desserts to make use of a flat of blueberries. I was there for one thing, bread. I didn’t really want the blueberries, even though I wanted the other items I picked up in addition to the bread (a case of Pellegrino, a handful of Rainier cherries, two peaches.)
The woman behind me had two pints in her cart. The man in front of me bought two flats.
“What are the blueberries for?” asked the checker.
“I don’t know,” he replied. He paused. He forced himself out of the reality of not having any good reason to buy them and created one. “I’ll give them away.”
“To whom?” she inquired.
Another pause.
“I don’t know,” he stated, flatly.
I think he was right. He had no idea. But he’ll come up with one. We all do, when faced with the void, or the alternative – I’m buying blueberries that I don’t need or want because I’m susceptible to advertising strategies that impact my behavior more than I ever allow myself to acknowledge. I am not an independent person with my own ideas and ideals. I am a cog in a machine who mistakenly believes that by standing firm against The Machine, I am not a cog, but here I am, a cog in the other, alternative machine.
Rather than allow ourselves to know these truths, we come up with a post hoc reason to explain our blueberry purchase. All around town, blueberries are being turned in to the one item that everyone now believes they wanted. Sometime later that day, the man in front of me probably told his friends that he intended, all along, to give them a little bit of a summer treat. That it was his intent to offer his co-workers a little something for the extra work they put in over the last few days on the project’s final push. Yup, blueberries were the plan.
My blueberries are still on my counter. I don’t know what I’ll do with them. A friend told me she freezes fresh blueberries and when her kids want something cold, they take a handful and pop them in their mouths. Maybe I’ll freeze them. But then who’d eat them? My husband will be searching for ice cream if he opens the freezer door; my son doesn’t like blueberries; and my teeth are sensitive to cold.
I’ve previously referred to this store admiringly as the Disneyland of grocery stores – everything shiny and slightly overpriced and if it’s not the happiest place on earth, I’m always quite happy in that store. The produce is lush, the meat and fish counters offer the finest cuts of the finest specimens, the desserts are an act of art, the fresh food and soup bar overflows with aromatic choices. Disneyland manages and moves people, makes them happily part with their money for souvenirs and photos and snacks and beverages they do not want or need. All these principles were in motion at the market. I bought blueberries because the members of the store’s marketing department wanted me to, and were pretty sure I would. I dutifully succumbed to the forces of the economic masterminds behind this independent market. I’ve got the blueberries to prove it. And I’m still happy. Even if I don’t eat those berries, I’ve used them. Inspiration was on sale and I bought it.
One word – smoothies.
They’ve now moved to the fridge, and may end up in a bread pudding later today. Or maybe not!