Actually, ma'am, you might want to rethink how you're handling the corn.
Sunday morning I had just approached the corn table at the farmer’s market when an older woman muscled in next to me with her basket.
I sized up the corn and selected an ear, peeling a small bit of the husk down about half an inch so I could look at the kernels.
“You know, doing that dries it out,” the woman told me.
I had headphones in so I pretended I couldn’t hear her, bagged the ear and did the same thing with another ear.
She started speaking again, only more loudly. “You can get the same result by doing this –” she started working her hands around the ear in a gesture that I’m pretty sure could start a fist fight in New York. Or end your career as a sign language interpreter.
I’m generally polite, and would normally accept someone’s tip with a bashful smile or light apology. But I grew up in rural Michigan, helping my dad with his sizable garden, making my first $20 selling vegetables (including corn) door-to-door from a Radio Flyer wagon, which I pulled while wearing overalls with a patch that said, “I’m proud to be a farmer.”
So I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I suggest it unlikely that her corn-handling qualifications match or exceed mine.
Which — along with her rich city person’s Williams Sonoma farmer’s market basket — is why her advice immediately rubbed me the wrong way.
So you know what I said?
pithypants 