Will pie-spying be next? (July 24)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
Walmart will soon put electronic tags on some of the merchandise it sells in order to keep track of inventory. If you buy a pair of jeans there, you may find it has a tag on it which will allow the store to read and record what you have bought.
Mrs. Doud thinks they should put those tags in food. That way, she could call the grocery store and ask them whether I had been buying things like cream pies to take to the office and eat.
She does not think cream pies, candy bars or chocolate milk are good for me, and she is probably right. I am getting older, and as that happens, my little pot belly is not so little any more. In fact, it looks like I may be smuggling watermelons underneath my shirt — small watermelons, but watermelons to be sure.
Actually, I like those small watermelons about as much as I like cream pies. They are sweet and juicy, and you don’t have to spit the seeds. They do cause you to use up more than one paper napkin as you eat them, though. And I have gotten a lot of red juice spots on my shirts because of them.
If I decide to buy jeans and cream pies at Walmart, the people there who read those little labels will soon see a pattern. If the cream pie count goes up, my present jean sizes will expand. I have been trying to prevent that by starving myself. Sometimes I don’t eat anything all day except a cream pie.
In the interests of nutrition, though, I try to vary the types of cream pies I eat. There’s banana cream, chocolate cream, even lemon cream. Sometimes I’ll eat health pies — pumpkin and sweet potato. I try to hit all the food groups. But that doesn’t satisfy Mrs. Doud. She wants me to stay healthy. To that end, she’ll spy on my purchases if she can.
If I’m going to keep my eating habits to myself, I’ll have to buy my pies from pushers at church socials.
