a moment in the day: cherry

The grocery cashier picks up my bottle of tart cherry juice. "What do you do with this?" she asks.

"My husband mixes it with bubbly water, but I drink it straight," I say.

She looks close at the bottle. "You just drink it straight?"

"I really like things with a whole lot of flavor," I say. "It's really tart and just has a lot of flavor."

She runs the cherry juice over the scanner and the scanner beeps. "I don't do condiments," she says. "I like my flavor to be in my food. I don't buy plain tortilla chips and dip them in salsa. I get tortilla chips with the salsa already on them."

"Oh, that's smart," I say. I don't think it's necessarily smart, but I don't know what else to say.

She runs my kale and Stephen's smoked turkey through the scanner, puts them in the bag.

"If I buy mayonnaise, it's just complicated," she says. "Then I have to think, do I buy bread? Do I buy ham? Maybe I make tuna fish."

I could eat mayonnaise with a spoon. For a moment, I think about telling this to the grocery cashier, but I decide against it. The fact that you could eat mayonnaise with a spoon is probably not something you should be telling people.