Super Fancy Good

Don’t Ever Change, Berkeley

Andronico’s, the bastion of yuppie groceries in the Bay Area, has a display case of locally-baked bagels right inside its front door. It’s hard to miss. You bend over to grab your bachelor basket (because you’ll never eat the food put in a adult-sized cart before it goes bad) and can’t help but stare at Asiago goodness on the way back up.

This is how I decide what to eat for Sunday breakfast. 

The tottering old lady huffs that I’m clearly in her way, so I strafe over and grab a plastic bag, unblocking her view … and then watch as she stares at the plethora of untoasted potential before her. She is utterly transfixed, eyes wide like a spooked deer or, well, an uppity woman who’s late for her NYT Sunday issue and soy chai, honestly.

I can’t help but wonder which way she’ll go. Plain? No way. That’s the shit they feed the proletariat. Whole wheat is certainly a healthy choice, but too passe. How about that entire row of bagels with giant oats pasted on top, likely milled at a local farm where the chickens all have best friends? No way will she go Everything Bagel like I would: she is a woman of decisions, and Everything is for those who can’t be bothered to pick a favorite.

I’m mentally mapping her options when it dawns on me that she’s not looking at the bagels at all. She’s trying to figure out how to open the display case.

One second. Five seconds. 15, then 30 seconds. She’s stumped.

A better person would have stepped in to help before her frantically-splayed hands find the light switch, flicking it on and off multiple times to verify that it doesn’t also control the doors. I am not that person. I’m a child in constant search of amusement.

Finally I can’t stand it. As her head turns to the left, in search of a hinge she can unscrew with her piercing gaze, I quickly reach to the middle of the case and open one of the doors with the clearly marked knob. 

And somehow, she doesn’t see me do this. When she turns back, her face is twisted in a display of triumph, as if she somehow discovered the secret combination to unlock the display of baked goods. I’m not even there.

The woman snatches a blueberry bagel so fast I half expect her to shove the whole thing in her manically grinning mouth, then teeters off toward the soy milk and sparkling water.