I’ll be writing about you later.
I met a man the other day, and I thought, “I’ll be writing about you later.”
He was a pleasant fellow, but all real weirdos are.
He started strong. “Do you work for these people?” as we both stood on the same side of the deli counter, him waving a salami at me.
To be clear, he didn’t mean did I work for the store; he meant did I work for the company that makes the prepackaged salami he was holding. Like I follow my work around the country making ensuring it gets the respect it deserves.
Before I could tell him I didn’t, he launched into a tirade about the ingredients used in the salami. To illustrate his point, he kept pointing at the ingredients, “Potassium. What’s that for? “ Before, I could point out he wasn’t looking at the ingredients but the nutrition facts. He moved on to asking about why I would put sodium in my sausage, or trans-fats. He started to slow his speech. It was like he had opened a book at the wrong page while reading aloud, realising he was on the wrong page but not wanting to admit the mistake.
Then he picked up other packets of sliced meat and wanted me to know why he liked these ones better than the ones he thought I made.
He pivoted at this point to talking about the number of times he has called the health unit and reported super markets for selling unsafe food. He told me he once saw worms in fresh fish and the store refused to remove them from sale. That sounds like something worth reporting. He also reported a store selling cookies one day past the best before date. A little less concerning.
He has called to report stores so many times that the health unit know him by name.
Don’t get him started on what humans are doing to the planet and how it affects the food we eat. I didn’t start him on this, he just pivoted again. There is a fine line between genuine concern that we are ruining the earth and lunacy. I will let you guess which side of the line he was on.
Then he pulled out his phone. He wanted to show me some photos. I always get concerned when people pull out their phones. I am not sure what the correct response is if you see a picture of something you shouldn’t as they are swiping through. What if it’s a deeply inappropriate photo I’m not meant to see? Say something massively longer and thicker than I’d thought possible. I then would be left wondering if that belongs to the person holding the phone. Is that a friends? I’d have so many questions.
Fear not, he whipped out his phone so I could see. He’s tortoises. That is not a euphemism. It seemed like we were pivoting again. He breeds and raises Indian Star tortoises. He showed me his sheds and tanks that they live in. He had pictures of the animals, they all had names and seemingly independent lives. They are very pretty. He told me they were rare and he could get in trouble for having them. That he documents everything he does with them, so he has a record if the government ever asks him.
I later looked them up on Wikipedia. They are rare and considered vulnerable, with about 10,000 left. I counted 20 in his pictures. That is roughly 0.2% of all Indian Star tortoises on the planet!
Then he pivoted again, “Are you local? Do you want to buy some property? He was moving to the middle of the country and had some property, probably infested with tortoises, he wanted to sell.
We were about twenty minutes in at this point, when a member of staff walked by. Without saying good bye to me, he said to them, “I want to talk to you about your cabbages.” and followed the staff member away from me.
