A week into J’s visit (J being K’s mother) and she finally went out shopping. I took her on our weekly grocery rounds yesterday afternoon, wondering what she’d think of the wonders of American consumer choice, which plays itself out practically in a grocery store that has an entire row of paper towels.

This is not the first time J has been to America. She came for a visit almost ten years ago, but I think she stayed fairly exclusively in the safely Polish sections of Chicago.

When I returned to America after a couple of years in Poland, it was that choice over-kill that shocked me. I’d grown used to little corner stores where I stood on one side of the counter and the food and grocer were on the other, and I had to as for everything by name (which does wonders for language learning). She didn’t comment on the paper towels though.

I kept an eye on J, hoping to see what might catch her eye. It was finally in Ingles that she showed some real excitement. We passed an isle display of a particularly southern snack and her eyes light up and she began, “Oh, these are those, those, those,” searching for what in the heck you’d call fried pork rinds in Polish.

Thinking she couldn’t possibly realize what these things were, I said “the skin of”¦” and she found her word. The best word for something as untranslatable as “pork rinds.”Pork Rinds

“Pig chips!”she cried. “Oh, we loved these. We ate them all the time!”

She had me translate each flavor for her so she could pick the one she wanted: cheddar.

“Of all the things for her to get excited about,” I thought, putting a bag of fried pork skin into my shopping cart for the first time in my life.

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