Food Groups at the Whole Foods

Note: I use the word ‘hippies’ in this article not as a term of derision, but as a descriptive adjective. Most of my friends growing up were (and still are) hippies. And I use the term with boundless affection merely to describe.


Sadly, my year with BOB has come to an end and today I moved out my last bit of stuff and moved much much closer to work which will only be a good thing, I think. While checking out the surroundings near the new place while at lunch one day, I found one of those ‘healthy food’ grocery stores. I think it was a Whole Foods but maybe not – but that’s what I’ll call it.

So, I’m in a Whole Foods and I suppose it’s important to point out that at the time I’m in uniform. As a white male I can’t say I’ve ever been in a social setting where I felt more conspicuous – unless you count that one Friday afternoon in chop-chop square in Riyadh, but that’s an entirely different story.

As a native of a state that specializes in tie-dye t-shirts and henna tattoos, I suppose that somewhere in me there is a little bit of a hippy - I’ll admit that and happily so. But there’s also a little Native American in me too (Blackfoot), but I’d still stick out if I was wandering around one of their gatherings. But I like to think that all the prejudices we hold are fading at least a little as we mature as a nation.

So I’m trawling around the store looking for, I don’t know, any one of the four food groups I’m familiar with – sugar, caffeine, chocolate and the orange stuff in the middle of a Butterfinger – and I’m not finding any of it. Even the sugar is unrefined and looks most disturbingly unlike any sugar that I’m used to.

Thinking I see an aisle of solace, I notice a sign that says, “snacks.”

I think it’s fair to say that people who are familiar with WF, and by association, clothing made from hemp, know that this sign does not lead to any of my four food groups. The Whole Foods snack aisle is made up almost entirely of … well, I’m not sure. I swear I’d never seen most of these things before in my life. I’m pretty sure much of it was fruit or vegetable matter of some form – dried, desiccated or in some other fashion wholly and entirely not made of chocolate.

To be fair, WF does have chocolate. Green & Black’s organic chocolate to be precise. It’s vegan-approved. I know this not because I lunged toward it in the snack aisle, but because I worked with a woman in England who was a Vegan and it was the only thing I could get her that I knew she could eat when the rest of us were having cake or it was Secretaries Day or her birthday or something.

So, feeling like a lost leper, I keep wandering through the WF. The granola people would stare at me at first and then, remembering that the first Gulf War in 1991 was the catharsis moment of my generation which gave Americans permission to love the soldier, hate the war, they would smile and carry on.

An aside here regarding the smile. It wasn’t a ‘friendly’ smile…it was meant to be, but really it was an “I feel sorry for you” smile. And again, I don’t think they felt sorry for me because I’m in the military. They had the same look you get when you see a really old person wandering in the grocery store looking for something they can’t find, like their feet. There was some genuine compassion there, but neither party to the smile was really sure why.

So I wandered around for a little longer and finally found a case where they sold sandwiches – and lunch was all I was really looking for to begin with. As I picked up a sandwich, I turned around and saw an African-American lady standing next to me. We gave each other a nod and something just short of a giggle. She and I both knew two things at that moment: First, that we were the only ones like us within 40,000 square feet; and second, that somewhere in that store one of the workers kept a box of ding dongs hidden in his locker for his smoke break.

Maybe we are maturing as a nation - maybe the majority of us now look at our differences as people as the thing that makes up our strength as 'a people'. Still, I wasn’t about to buy the brownie they were offering for $4.95.

A quick paragraph or two

Greetings!
It's been 53 weeks since I started this blog - this is my 51st post, so on average I'm not doing too badly - nearly once a week. Ideally it would be once a week but life just isn't that interesting.

I moved out of BOB this week and into a slightly smaller BOB so I have stuff everywhere and it's all  a bit of a muddle. Next week I get to go home and see Shadow and the kids and while it's only for a couple weeks it will certainly be nice to get away from Texas and constant 100+ degree temps.

When I get back, I'll get back to writing here and see if we can make it every week (or at least on average) for the next year - yup another year. Classes start again in July so we'll see how that goes again. If it goes as well as the last semester, that would be grand, truly, it would.

In my next post in mid-July (maybe sooner but probably not) I'll be able at the very least to mention my 25th class reunion, which is being held at a museum. How appropriate.

Where are the adults

So, I’m looking at Facebook, you know, catching up on how people with actual lives are doing, and it turns out one of the ‘kids’ I had as a cadet is going to be a dad; and right below that post was another one of the ‘kids’ I had as a cadet is saying how she will never have children because it just looks some kind of ungodly uncomfortable.


And I thought, damn! These people are going to reproduce – or are in the midst of it now. How in the name of all that’s holy is that right? They are going to have little ‘thems’ running around and asking serious questions and needing to learn how to grow up, but the thing those unborn kids don’t know yet – their parents have no frickin’ idea.

And then…then... I thought…neither do I. How is it, exactly, that I’m qualified to be a grown-up? When I was a kid there were grown-ups – you know, adult people who knew things and who you could turn to with questions and expect answers.

Now? Now, there’s me - us! We sit around writing blogs and carrying on ‘conversations’ on Facebook and some build little pretend farms and … Christ, our children are so screwed it’s almost not worth thinking about.

But then, I did. Think about it, that is. And I expended considerable energy that would otherwise go toward making peanut butter and fluff sandwiches and really tried to remember what ‘adults’ were like when I was growing up. And upon careful reflection, I don’t think the young generation is quite as shafted as one would think – at least not from anything we have done as adults.

I’m lucky in that the age between me and my son is the same age as between me and my dad – so I have a nice frame of reference in which to make this comparison. And while I’ll admit our parents teach us a lot – I mean they kind of have to if they ever want us out of the house – I don’t really remember a lot specifically. I do remember when I was16 and got my driver’s license I already had my own car. When I was trying it out, my dad got in the driver’s seat and was looking it over and giving approving remarks. And then he shifted his glance and looked backward through the gap in the bucket seats and said the following, “Easy access to the back seat – that’s good.”

Wha…? He didn’t give me a conspiratorial wink or anything. He just said it.

So, I had to really think and ask myself, did I ever get any really good information or has every parent since time began really just kind of winged it – making it up as they went in the hopes that they didn’t figuratively pee in the gene pool.

It turns out, and I’m no rocket surgeon, that as I sit here all middle-aged and wondering what ever happened to adults, the sad truth is – nothing. They’ve always been like this. When you’re young, you just don’t know any better because your world is so incredibly small that everybody seems smart. Hell, I thought Capt. Kangaroo was a genius when I was a kid despite the fact he kept falling for Mr. Moose’s ping pong ball trick every single time.

The naiveté of children is what makes it so wonderful to be parent and it’s also probably what makes parents seem like ‘adults’ to the kids. So, while it’s freaking me out a little that people who were sitting in my class two years ago unable to make a decent PowerPoint slide are now making other people, I’m consoled at least by the fact that they really don’t know any less than you or I did – and you know it.

Doing what matters

I actually wrote the following for Air Force Live - a blog site. I was asked to find someone to write a blog about an event and I volunteered to do it. I think, after attending, I would have written something here anyway. The event was the return of the body of a soldier from Texas who was killed in Afghanistan. I could copy and paste the story here, but I'll give you the link instead - maybe you'll see blog posts from other Air Force members you'll be interested in. Thanks for coming back here time after time - I appreciate it and I hope you take away from reading this post a fraction of what I took from being there and writing it.

http://airforcelive.dodlive.mil/index.php/2011/06/an-airman-rises-to-honor-a-fallen-soldier/