Letters To Strangers (I'm on a roll).....

To the lady at the supermarket yesterday, in the bulk bin section - yes, you: Dear Sneaky Taste-Tester, Well, well, this is a surprise. I was under the impression that you were an urban legend. That most grown adults, in particular conservatively dressed grandma types, know that it is absolutely unacceptable to take a tester from a bulk bin of snack food with their bare hands. I thought you didn't exist. That you were a mere figment of my imagination. I imagine that you should be ashamed of yourself, but from the nonchalant way that you nibbled your corn chips and moved on, I'm assuming that you hadn't even a small pang on guilt. It's not like you were testing the chippies to assess their freshness because you were going to buy them. You just gathered a dainty handful and kept walking. Now look: it's really none of my business, I suppose. Perhaps you are from a foreign country where they don't have bulk bins and you were delighted to see the grocery store had kindly provided row upon row of tasty snacks for weary hungry shoppers. Maybe you had a slight brain aneurism and temporarily forgot your manners. Or, perhaps you thought that no one was looking and like the whole 'if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make any sound?" that because no one was looking that you therefore didn't technically just steal those snackerels. The thing is? We saw you. And by 'we' I mean me and my kids. And we all know that kids don't let adults get away with crap. They immediately demanded to know why you were eating from the bulk bin. With your bare hands. Without paying for your snack. So I told them the only reasonable thing I could think of. I told them that although there was nothing we could do about it, and that I didn't know why you were eating from the bin, that if I were in charge of you, I'd put you in a time out for 62 minutes. One minute for each year of your life. I think that's reasonable. In fact, I think we'll suggest it to the store manager the next time we're at Coopers. He could put a big old time-out chair right there in the bulk food section with a giant timer on display above it. Consider yourself warned. FG