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.”ï
“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.