Dill Pickles

Today was customer appreciation day at Safeway. Every first Tuesday of the month, Safeway extends an olive branch to loyal customers (and any other customers that happen upon the store that day) by offering them 10% off or 10x the Airmiles on their purchase. The net result of Safeway Customer Appreciation Day is that I use the opportunity to buy things that either I don't need (because I wasn't paying attention and bought them two days previously) or that I could practically get cheaper at Costco, even with the 10% off.

Their ploy to rope people in is clearly directed at individuals like myself. Individuals who, when walking the aisles of Safeway, feel the need to seize the moment of this extraordinary savings event to purchase condiments, junk food, overpriced cheeses, and pickles. I can rationalize that this savings event is neither extraordinary (only 10% off) nor particularly rare (monthly). Yet, I am invariably compelled to buy more ketchup. We have ketchup. The posh cheese already in the fridge requires sections of mould to be cut off before one can eat it already. And yet I buy more. I kick myself for eating those confounded Bits & Bites, but not only are they 10% off, but there's a two-for-a-special-price deal on. I buy more.

The pickles. Well, I avoided buying pickles today. I bought the much more consumable cousin, the cucumber. Thankfully, no more pickles. Still, the pickles haunt me. All the new refridgeration-required food needed a place on arrival home. I was about half-way through this process of positioning the new food next to the old food in our entirely reasonably-sized fridge that my spacial awareness kicked in. It clearly was not going to fit seamlessly. Rearrangement started in earnest. Packages of this and that were removed and placed on the counter. Left-overs in their precariously stackable containers were removed and placed on the counter. Milk was removed and placed on the counter. Anna was convinced that she was thirsty and given a pint of orange juice so that the large container that once held it could be culled. Despite plans for a meal of fresh food, left-overs were bumped up the priority chart and served for dinner. And, after much re-packing, it all fit.

In my moment of smug organizational satisfaction, I turned around to find the large dill pickle jar staring me in the face. Seriously? Where the hell are these going to fit? I open the door and just stare. I go to move the margarine but am suddenly confronted by the potential knock-on effect of such a brash move. I hesitate. The permutation and combinations are too vast to thoughtfully consider. Perhaps I could move the impossibly large ketchup squeeze bottle? No. Whilst not loved by us parents, its frequent use by the kids and diminishing contents means it has to sit upside down and it has been balanced between the sour cream and the humous. I am keenly aware that I now have new ketchup, but it remains sealed and doesn't require refrigeration just yet.

I am left with few options and consider the fate of the pickles. No one but me actually eats them. I don't particularly like them. In fact, these ones were bought some time ago. There's no obvious best before date, but I consider whether I would even eat them at this point without giving serious consideration to their suitability for consumption. Can you just throw out a nearly full bottle of pickles though? It doesn't seem right.

"Who eats pickles anyway?" I find myself asking. My step-dad does. He really likes them. In fact, he's probably responsible for the few that have been eaten. They get pulled out at every BBQ to be overlooked by everyone but Opa (Rick, my stepdad). Indeed, I recall as a teenager a pickle incident. Being what I believe to be a typical teenage boy, I would often eat vast amounts of food. I didn't often bother with the niceties of preparation and, on many occasions, would consume large amounts of single items for the simple ease of having to only deal with one set of packaging. On one occasion, I reached for the pickles. Rick got unreasonably upset (or so I felt) over the rather sudden disappearance of what he must have assumed were his personal jar of pickles (being that it was basically only him that ate them). Being a parent and having a great deal more perspective now, I look back and realize that Rick was probably saying, "Why don't you clean up after yourself, you lazy SOB?" or "why the hell can't you help out more around the house?" or "did you seriously just spend the little bit of money you make on beer and CDs?" But Rick's string is too long and his generosity nearly without bounds, so in the end, I got mildly chewed out for cleaning the house out of pickles.

In true teenage fashion, I chose to remember it. The irony is that now I shake my head at myself for feeling indignant. So, 25 years later, the jar of possibly off Bick's pickles cannot be thrown out, if only so I can offer one to Rick at the next BBQ. I determine that they can be delicately balanced on top of the two, stacked egg cartons and just fit under the light. It's not a perfect solution, but we'll have omelettes or scrambled eggs tomorrow morning and see if we can't reduce that to a single carton stack.

Gratuitous Eva photo. Fan of many things, but not pickles.