In which I pine for the University of Chicago, share a bulk foods epiphany, and pity WinCo customer service.

"How do you feel about Wednesday?"

That's a University of Chicago essay prompt from a couple of years ago, and I'm just throwing it out there as an example of why everyone should want to go there.

(Also! "Have you ever walked through the aisles of a warehouse store like Costco or Sam’s Club and wondered who would buy a jar of mustard a foot and a half tall? We’ve bought it, but it didn’t stop us from wondering about other things, like absurd eating contests, impulse buys, excess, unimagined uses for mustard, storage, preservatives, notions of bigness . . . and dozens of other ideas both silly and serious. Write an essay somehow inspired by super-huge mustard.")

And sure, I realize that if I do happen to get into UChicago, I will be thoroughly incapable of paying for it, but a girl can dream. ;]

Speaking of strange things you can buy in grocery stores, guys, let's talk about WinCo. WinCo the, yes, grocery store. What a clever segue I pulled off there. Let's all admire it for a moment.

...Alright, done with that now. So, during break, my dad picked me up from a friend's house around 10:30 and said we had to stop at WinCo on the way home. We proceeded to spend almost an hour collecting ingredients for chili, cookies, and lasagna (...yep), and let me tell you people, the late-night WinCo crowd is downright intriguing. But before we get to the stellar company, let's talk about the bulk foods.

I think I had some kind of bizarre epiphany in the bulk foods about the tyranny of materialism and the crimes of a society hypnotized by the notion of extreme convenience (okay, so that's a lie-- fine, you caught me).

You see, sitting there in the bulk foods was a huge bin of cookies, large cookies, all of them individually wrapped. And what I want to know is, how silly would you feel grabbing a scoop and pouring a bunch of cookies, each packaged in their own little plastic bags into...a bigger plastic bag? The correct answer here is "super silly," and if you got it right, you get 22.5 Emily points, redeemable for absolutely nothing, effective immediately.

Other things that were in huge bins in the bulk foods section: tea bags, Sweet 'n' Low, instant refried beans, and a sort of orange, clumpy, clay-like substance that purported to be useful in breading chicken. I personally thought it might be dirt from Mars when I first saw it, and was seriously disappointed when I got close enough to read the label.

Alright, remember wa-a-a-ay back, before you started reading that, er, series of observations-- which I'm now officially titling "Meditations on Bulk Foods and Space Dirt: The Kind of Stuff You Don't Really Want to Read About,"-- I promised to tell you about the late-night WinCo crowd? Well I'm about to make good on that promise. Prepare yourselves.

When my dad and I were ready to check out, we saw that there were only two cashiers working (keep in mind that it's maybe midnight at this point). We picked the one on the left, since someone was already checking out with the one on the right. As our cashier was scanning our cornmeal (yep, we bought cornmeal-- in the bulk foods, incidentally), the other cashier said to our cashier, "Hey, can this lady return stuff here, or does she have to go through customer service?" Our cashier glanced over at the people checking out on the right and answered, "Well, what's she trying to return?"

"Chapstick," the other cashier said, perfectly serious.

"It is not moisturizing my lips like, at all," the customer interjected at this point, one hand on her hip.

Please, if you will, humor me and imagine a long (and long-suffering) pause in which my brain struggles to understand what has just happened, finds that the contortions required to do so are putting it in extreme pain, gives up, retires, and moves to Florida.

"She's gonna have to go through customer service," our cashier said.

Have a good night guys, and please remember tonight's moral: if it's touched your lips, well, it's touched your lips.