THE FAT CARROT
“It won’t fit through the slot,” the nice young lady in the post office said.
“Just push a little,” I said.
The post office was not a post office like a post office used to be. The post office was in the back of a drug store where once upon a time sexual aids were kept.
Now the sexual aids are in the front and the post office is in the back. One gets used more than the other.
“We can’t force it,” said the nice lady.
“I would never force anything,” I said. “Just try again and use a little umph.”
She slid my plain brown paper envelope through a slot in a plastic measuring stick and ninety per cent of it went fine. Then it got stuck.
“See, it won’t go,” she said a tiny bit triumphantly.
“Just push a little, just a little,” I said.
“The rules are that it must slide through the slot and this has a bump.”
The difference was $13.50, which is a lot to pay for a bump, especially a tiny bump.
The problem was that my granddaughter now lives in Montreal. But before she moved she planted some carrot seeds in my back yard. Most of the carrots are the size of her little finger, and when you are eight the little finger is not very big.
But one of the carrots, the prize one, was a big as my right thumb. When you spend your life using your right thumb to hit the space bar on typewriters and computers it gets to be a pretty healthy size.
“With you she will be thrilled,” I said to the carrot.
So I put a few small carrots and the impressive, healthy, beautiful Tom Thumb of a carrot into a plastic freezer bag and then into a small padded envelope.
But Tom was too big for the slot at the back of the drug store. Obviously there are times when size does matter.
If it had fit it would have gone first class and cost $2.50. As an over- sized fat package with a thumb sized carrot it was $15.
“If you won’t squish it let me have it back,” I said. I love my granddaughter but even organic carrots grown in imported soil from wherever special organic carrot soil would be imported from would not cost $15 for a bunch that would barely cover the palm of her hand.
I brought it home, took apart the padded envelope and cut the padding out from around the spot where Tom Thumb was resting and taped it up again.
“Almost,” said the nice clerk who was losing the right to be called nice.
“Just a small nudge,” I said. “Just try a little squish.”
“Has to slide, she said.
“Let me do it,” I said.
“Nope, rules you know. Only I can do it.”
“A kid could squeeze it through there,” I said, trying to emphasize with my fingers how easy it would be.
“I can’t use any force whatsoever,” said the rule abiding clerk who I no longer liked.
I took it back again, went home and pulled up every carrot in her tiny patch and put them into the envelope. If I am going to pay $15 she’s not getting a nibble, she’s getting a salad. Actually there were only six more pinky sized carrots but I was trying to save money on the first envelope.
“It cost the same as a bottle of wine,” my wife said. “And she will enjoy it more.”
I went to a different store. No way was I going to let the rotten clerk who would not squish a carrot know she had won. And besides, carrots can stand a little squishing, can’t they?
Two days later I got a most happy phone. Thank you, thank you, all that sort of stuff that makes you know grandchildren are much sweeter than children.
My daughter got on the phone. “That’s a lot of money for a few carrots,” she said.
I agreed and told her about the stubborn, miserable clerk.
Then my granddaughter wanted to say something else.
“I’m so glad you didn’t squish the big one, that’s my favorite.”
I knew that. I knew you cannot take a chance on squishing a carrot by forcing it against its will through a tiny slot that was obviously too small. And I would never have tried to do that just to save a few dollars and give up a bottle of wine. Never. Not me. Not grandpa.
She ate her carrots, even shared them with her little sister and her mother, and 3,000 miles away I drank my water. It was a wonderful dinner.
Mike
Comments