The Avocado Acolyte
The queue for self-checkout was, as usual, a testament to the human spirit's capacity for both patience and passive-aggression. My spirit was currently leaning heavily towards the latter. Ahead of me stood a woman, late 40s, sporting a tie-dye t-shirt and an aura of profound contemplation. Her basket contained exactly one item: a single, glistening avocado.
"Excuse me," she announced, not to the machine, but to the air, "but are you *certain* this particular specimen has reached its peak potential?"
The self-checkout machine, a paragon of digital indifference, flashed 'PLEASE SCAN ITEM'.
She rotated the avocado slowly, like a sommelier appraising a rare vintage. "The skin, you see, it lacks that certain *give*. A firmness, yes, but not a… resilience. More of a defiance." She looked at me, her eyes wide with the urgency of her dilemma. "Don't you agree?"
My brain, which had been mentally calculating the time until my own microwave pizza, sputtered. "Uh, it looks… green?" I offered, a master of diplomatic understatement.
She gasped. "Green is merely a hue, young man! The *essence* is what we seek! The buttery soul within!" She then proceeded to gently tap the avocado on various parts of the machine, as if trying to elicit a confession. "Tell me your secrets, verdant sphere!"
A small child behind me started to cry, probably overwhelmed by the philosophical weight of the situation. I considered offering my own perfectly ripe avocado from my basket as a sacrifice, but I needed it for my highly anticipated guacamole (for the microwave pizza). The store manager, a man whose soul had clearly been crushed by a thousand similar encounters, finally intervened. He approached with the weary air of a priest performing an exorcism.
"Ma'am, is there a problem with the avocado?"
She held it up, a sacred artifact. "Only that it has not yet revealed its true self to me. How can I purchase a fruit that is still shrouded in mystery?"
The manager, without a word, took a different avocado from a nearby display, squeezed it briefly, and handed it to her. "This one's ripe."
She looked at him, then at the new avocado, then back at the original. A beat passed. Then, with a shrug, she scanned the new one. "Well, that was anticlimactic. I suppose some mysteries are best left unsolved." She paid, and floated away, leaving behind a wake of avocado-scented existential dread.
I finally scanned my microwave pizza. It was, I noted with a sigh, perfectly ripe for consumption.