Standing-between a produce aisle and a candy aisle as the light and buzz of fluorescence engulphed him, Dan Mandel found himself looking back and forth between the odd placement of foodstuffs in the store. More so, he found his mind abuzz with activity and his brain afire with ideas around the explanation that led to this product placement.
Is the produce aisle the area where kids are most likely to get bored of shopping and start asking their parents for things!? Dan’s face scrunched into a look of grumpy consideration. Or does the store manager have a sense of irony that he or she can only explore via bizarre placement of groceries? The lines on his face deepened. Oooooooorrr… Maybe it’s part of some bizarre recruitment drive SLASH secret war between health-food nuts and the candy industries… Dan smiled slightly to himself and shook his head. The things I think of… I can’t BELIEVE I actually thought this setup was the work of targeted marketing or a bored manager… Yes! Secret war between foodies. That’s undeniably it.
Dan took a large, satisfied inhale of air then slowly let it out as his expression sank into one of boredom. Now where the heck did that girl run off to?! She’s not in the toy OR the balloon section and she’s not actively setting fire to the bakery here for using inferior ingredients, meaning she could be ANYWHERE in the store!
A soft crackle rustled Dan out of his thoughts as the dulcet tones of doo-wop sounded out from the Grocery store’s speakers.
“Mama said there’d be days like this.
“There’ll be days like this, mama said.”
Dan pointed an angry index finger up at the nearest speaker in the ceiling. “Shut UP the half-dead zombie of The Shirelles! Mama told me squat about girls!” Dan’s eyes shifted to the left as he rubbed his chin. “Unless you count, ‘Stay away from those girls! You’re not vaccinated and I’d hate if you accidentally got some poor kid sick…’” He folded his arms across his chest and began to gumble to himself. “Lousy wasted childhood spent making sure I didn’t give the neighbors measles or polio!” Dan groaned. It wasn’t just the hidden Illuminati-like conspiracies that few other than him could see or the pretty much objectively terrible childhood…
The fact of the matter was that as great as Dan’s relationship with Pinkie was, there were still little things that bugged him. For instance, she had a tendency to get distracted and zip off when they were oh… say, grocery shopping. Or, she might get distracted and disappear somewhere when Pinkie dragged Dan out to a local farmers market which seemingly never had any spare farmers for sale. Worst was when she’d get distracted and zip off when they were in a large department store or mall and Dan had to call Pinkie to find her!
Okay, so it was technically just the one little thing that happened under different, but still very similar, circumstances. That being said, Pinkie detailing out exactly what store or landmark she was at involved Dan listening to a lot of inapplicable directions, vague descriptions of what mood the people around her were in, usually half-explained in color, and whatever smells Pinkie cobbled together in her head than he'd ever thought he'd have to tolerate in his adult life. It was like getting directions from a blind aura reader with an enhanced sense of smell that was also usually hungry at the time.
In Dan's case, it was a lot of time wandering around looking for a familiar mop of pink hair while getting increasingly annoyed at an annoyingly chipper voice on the phone as he listened to a bunch of useless directions. Go 'UP' from the Koi pound towards the sorta of cautiously optimistic line of people who also feel surprisingly light-cherry-red?!' NOT HELPFUL! NO! Telling me the clothing aisle you're in 'smells ever so slightly of sandalwood, nutmeg, and a pile of pennies drenched in balsamic vinegar with a nice serving of artisan bread' doesn't 'narrow it down'! HOW HARD IS IT TO FIND AND READ A GIANT SIGN WITH THE NAME OF A STORE?!
“Surprise!” came a shout practically drilled into Dan’s ear via an excited and shrill voice. Before he could complain, he felt something soft, or rather two somethings soft press against his back as slender arms wrapped themselves around his chest. “Did you miss me?!”
Dan groaned and spun in place, where he held Pinkie at arms-length. “Pinkie! You did that thing again where we were together and you just ran off without saying so much as an ‘Ooh! Something shiny!’ to me!” Dan griped.
Pinkie puffed out her lower lip and widened her eyes. She leaned down so she could look up at her boyfriend who was shorter than her by several inches. “I’m sorry, Dan! But they had BBQ sauce on a BOGO free deal!” Pinkie smiled and brought herself back up to her full height as she motioned to a shopping cart filled to capacity. “I saw that and got a whole bunch! I figured we could go hog-wild making pulled pork the next few weeks!” she concluded with a giggle.
Normally, Pinkie would do or say something that immediately made Dan forget this was a problem and go back to enjoying a relationship mostly based around acquiring the maximum amount of smooches.
Dan smiled. “Well, who doesn’t love a good pulled pork!”
And this moment was absolutely no different from any of the other times that had happened.
Dan punctuated his statement by leaning forward as he stood on his toes and planted his lips against Pinkie’s. The couple enjoyed a not-so short lip press that concluded with an exaggerated “Mwua!” from Pinkie.
“So, are we done?” Dan asked before is standard grumpy expression returned. “You left me alone with my thoughts!” He grimaced. “I’ve been with you so long I forgot what that was like…” His face tightened. “It’s terrible… somewhat depressing, and worse than both those things combined, boring!”
Pinkie giggled. “Don’t worry…” She reached up and pulled a folded piece of paper and pen out of her collection of pink curls, unfolded the paper, then crossed off an item. “We just have oooooone more thing to grab, then we’re donskie!”
Dan’s lips twisted slightly in contemplation as he looked over Pinkie. “Hey, Goofball. I know it’s your thing and all, but if you just wore outfits that had pockets, you wouldn’t have to stick a buncha stuff in your hair just to have it with you.”
“Awww!” Pinkie protested as she took a couple steps back from Dan and stood next to a shopping cart filled to the brim. “But then I wouldn’t be able to wear cute outfits like this!” She said as she did a little pirouette. A rather appropriate action, given she was wearing lace ballet pumps with blue soles and pink lace complete with pink hearts on her heels, a pair of white tights, and three short tutu-like skirts, each a different tone, but specifically different tones of pink. A white tank-top with blue trim that sported her cutie mark on the chest completed the outfit, though Dan was never sure how Pinkie actually kept finding clothes with something as specific as a yellow balloon in front of two blue ones. “Do you like it?” Pinkie asked.
The crease on Dan’s forehead only increased instead of outcreased, which is what Pinkie would have preferred.
“You don’t like it,” she lamented.
“It looks like you ran outside without pants, but thought it was easier to beat someone up and take whatever they were wearing below the waist rather than go home and put more clothes on,” Dan explained. “And the first person you happened to come across just so happened to be a ballet dancer.”
“Sooooooo you do like it?”
Dan shrugged. “That depends. Did you actually beat up a ballet dancer?”
Pinkie giggled somewhat nervously. “You know what? Let’s just drop it, get the last item we need, then we can go home. That way you can just drop what I’m wearing as quickly as possible!” she added with a sultry smile.
Dan chuckled. “That was a bit of a stretch for suggesting I get you naked, Goofball, but I’ll take it…” Dan nodded to the list. “So, what’s left?”
“Onions!” Pinkie exclaimed as she zipped away for a moment and came back with a clear plastic bag of yellow onions.
Dan peered at the bag for a moment taking odd note of the stickers on the produce. “Don’t you put those horrible things anywhere near the rest of our food and various dirt-grown items that are only edible when enough butter and sugar is added!” He cried as he swatted Pinkie’s hand.
“Owwie!” Pinkie yelped in alarm as she dropped the bag to the floor. “Dan, what the heck?! They’re only onions! You love onions!”
“I love them dipped in batter and fried!” Dan clarified. He shook his head. “The fact that you got me to eat anything that grows out of the ground that isn’t drenched in boiling oil before it reaches my mouth is further testament to your evil temptress powers and wily ways compounded by your shapely good looks and adorably kissable, but EVIL, face!”
“Awww! You say the best things about me!”
Dan smirkedand posed proudly with his fists on his hips. “I do, don’t I?”
Pinkie grinned widely. “Still! I know you’ll eat onions even if they’re not in fried ring form! Besides, they have layers just like yo—”
“Pinkie, I swear if you make any comparisons to me and a certain movie ogre, I will beat you with a sack of potatoes! And not a small sack, either! One of the twenty-pound ones!”
Pinkie pursed her lips and whimpered slightly as she rubbed her smacked hand. “Okay, but I mean… That movie is kinda old, I think… I don’t get why you just decided now to be mad at onions.”
Dan grumbled to himself. “It’s not the fact that they’re onions, you beautiful moron!”
“Awwwwwwaaaaahhhh?” Pinkie uttered in a confused tone of being flattered and annoyed, as both expressions fought for control of her face.
“It’s the fact that they’re organic!” Dan shook his head. “How long where you touching them? We might have to burn off the top layer of skin from your palms.”
“Eeek!” Pinkie was once again gone in a pink blur. Just as quickly, she returned flicking water and lathered soap from her hands.
Dan narrowed his eyes and growled in annoyance. “If you were anyone else, I’d say that wasn’t enough…”
Pinkie grinned widely. “But I am me and you love me!”
Dan took in a deep breath and let it out. “Of course, but you’re still lucky I don’t chop off your hands after handling organic food like they were bit by a zombie.”
Pinkie frowned heavily. “Oh ORGaaaaNIC food onions… As opposed to… less-scary… uh… robot food onions? Which are better?!” Pinkie’s sky-blue eyes opened wide and she stared at her boyfriend fearfully. “Dan, did you get replaced with a robot… like… for real this time?!”
Dan sighed. “No, Goofball!” Dan ruffled his own hair in irritation. “Look… I only know this because you’ve forced me into the habit of eating fruits and vegetables and I like to know everything I can about my enemy especially if I’m going to eat them!”
“Like the blue jay that kept waking you up at eight in the morning!” Pinkie said in a bubbly tone.
Dan nodded. “Exactly! Okay, so ‘Organic’ is just a misleading label that the evil cabal of fruit and vegetable producers came up with so they could overcharge certain unexpecting rubes, like hippies and hipsters… You know… People who can be identified at a glance as belonging to some sort of type beginning with the letter ‘H’ under the umbrella category of always ‘hungry’.”
Pinkie gasped. “Or like that evil guy the history channel is always going on about! Hit—”
“Dial it back a notch,” Dan interrupted. “That’s a name, not a category.”
“Ooooooh! Oops,” Pinkie said with an embarrassed smile.
Dan shrugged. “Well, it’s a pretty easy mistake to make.”
“Hmmm…” Pinkie rubbed her chin slightly. “Well, I’ll grant that all hipsters and most hippies I’ve met are horrible, but that seems like teensy-tiny-weensy-whiny gross overstatement when I actually think about it!”
Dan raised a palm matter of factually. “Look, I’m not saying the creation of the organic food movement is exactly like starting the Third Reich, just that it’s a fairly close comparison.”
Pinkie grinned mischievously. “Would you say it’s close enough for—” Pinkie raised a leg and extended it in Dan’s direction “ —horseshoes?! OW!” she exclaimed as a potato bounced off her forehead.
“You watch yourself, missy!” Dan exclaimed. “I've got two hands! You might think forty pounds total of potatoes would be hard for me to get to a good beating swing, but you know better than anyone what I can accomplish when I put my mind to it!"
Pinkie rubbed her forehead. “Okay, okay! But I mean… you haven’t explained to me what’s so so wrong about organic food!” Pinkie sighed. "You just keep threatening my with increasingly large amounts of potatoes like every time we go grocery shopping!"
Dan let out an annoyed sigh. “Look, there’s kinda a lot to it, but what it boils down to is that organics snub scientific progress that makes food easier to produce, more naturally resilient to vermin, and more plentiful. All so some paranoid hippies can feel better about themselves and not have to worry that their inferior stock will be removed from the gene pool because of a little extra helping of synthetic pesticides." Dan shook his head. "And just because they're sure the natural toxic pesticides on organics are magically less bad at melting their internal organs from the inside out.”
Pinkie giggled. “Okay, but I mean… I see why that’d make you upset, but erm… Not ‘slap my hand and casually compare certain groups of people to a dictator’ angry.”
“Ugh… I guess you might have a point,” Dan admitted as he rubbed the back of his head before flipping a pal up matter of factually. “I’d normally just think it’s stupid instead of being angry if it wasn't for some of the crazier food purists who purchase organics didn’t do it as a way to establish a sense of superiority over others.” He took a deep, angry breath then let it out. “Nor would I be this ticked if they could just leave it at being intolerable douches who overpay for food that Big Vegetable has tricked us into eating in the first place." Dan began to grit his teeth. "But nooo, they have to skew research and draw fake conclusions that support their made-up”—Dan airquoted—“‘facts’ to trick people into avoiding more advanced and better named future foods. Not to mention shame us non-dirty hipster-hippies for actually paying attention to what genetically modified organism means!” Dan folded his arms across his chest and let out a “Harrumph!” before he continued. “Do you know there hasn’t been a single killer vegetable created because of genetic modification?” Dan thought for a moment. “I mean… discounting the one I created. Still! So much potential to make more food, feed more people, and create killer vegetable monsters all wasted because people think every geneticist is also a mad scientist.” Dan shook his head. “It’s like… five percent… ten tops!”
Pinkie’s smile dropped as she considered Dan’s words. “Wait… So, people are using this type of food to attack other types of food just because it makes them feel better about themselves?!”
“Uh… Yes!” Dan answered. “Yes, they are! So, in conclusion, either put those onions back where you found them or, better yet, throw them in the garbage. Under no circumstances are they coming back with us!”
Pinkie suddenly ducked down and grasped the plastic bag full of onions with one of her tightening fists as her knuckles went from pink to white. Letting a high-pitched “GGGGGRRRRRRRRRR!” escape from her clenched teeth, she scanned her surroundings for the nearest garbage can, but seemingly decided the grocery store’s local ‘Bakery’ was ‘close enough’ and lobbed the offending onions in that direction.
Dan grinned. “Nice shot!” he commented to the sound of clattering cookware and a startled store clerk.
Pinkie Pie clenched her fist once more, thrust them into the sky, and screamed at the heavens. “OOOOOORRRRGAAAAAAANIIIIC FOOOOOOOOD!”
PINKIE PIE Vs. ORGANIC FOOD