stealing – hannah ananas

My cousin pulled a can of beer out of the garage the other night.

It apparently tasted like metal, and nobody liked it… it had been out there for a very long time… and it might have come out of a dumpster just before it ended up in the garage…

Since nobody liked it, I offered to use it.

For what?

For my hair.

I told them how I sometimes use beer as conditioner – it is great for hair, plus it always smells great!

“So, you don’t drink beer, but you put it in your hair…”

Exactly. 😉

That was all yesterday.

Today, the beer was still on the counter, because I’d forgotten to use it last night in my shower.

The conversation somewhat repeats itself among the family who are gathered here today – and who happen to be all different from yesterday, except for my mom (and no, this is not our house).

In the middle of their doubt and unbelieving, my grandma confidently joins in, “Oh, yeah!… We used to sneak beers from my daddy’s, and use them… use them in our hair… oh, yeah,” she nods.

We all can’t help but to comment and ask her questions while she’s still talking, and she manages I answer our questions by the end of her two sentences.

Then my cousin says that, well, he, too, used to steal his daddy’s beers, but not for that, not for his hair…

We all laugh, processing the fact that Grandma user to steal beers… and that she poured them in her hair…

I mean, I‘m all about it, but I still think it’s a somewhat abnormal thing to do… too hipster for most these days, perhaps one could say…

‘I was stealing them for my hair, too… I was conditioning it from the inside… at the roots,’ my cousin adds.

Obviously, we love the nerdiness and the cleverness of the comment, and delight in our collective nerdiness.

Also, it felt nice to have my crazy idea actually sanctioned by someone considered not only sane but to be one in a place of authority within the whole family… that was great, and totally fun.

So, who knew that my grandma and I had ‘sneaking beers’ and ‘using beer in our hair’ in common?

Man, that’s cool.

My mom steals nuts. She really does. Well, sort of, anyway… She doesn’t actually steal in the traditional sense…

Every time we go to this specific grocery store, I somehow forget about this fact. That is, of course, I forget about it only until my mother walks up to me and offers me some nuts. “You want some nuts?” she’ll ask, and proffer me a handful of mixed nuts. The first time she did it, I didn’t understand. Where had she gotten a handful of nuts? Did she bring them in with her, and I just hadn’t noticed? But it quickly hit me.

“Did you get those from the …?”

“Mmhmm,” she cut me off, and then offered me the nuts again.

Naturally, I accepted. They were a bit old that first time, but that was it. Today, they were actually quite good. I really enjoyed them.

Perhaps you are wondering how it is my mother gets these nuts in a way that I do not feel any guilt or obligation in eating them. Well, you could call it a sort of recycling, in a way. You know how some stores have the pull-down dispensers for nuts, and sometimes even for cereals and other grains and such in the dried bulk foods section? And you know how there are almost always those same dried bulk foods spilled around on the little shelf below all of the dispensers? Do you see where this is going?

Hopefully, you aren’t entirely repulsed by this idea. It isn’t as though there is anything else on the shelves – they are cleaned constantly, as is required for something in such proximity to unpackaged foods.

Anyway, this particular store has a sort of tricky system for making those shelves look nice all of the time. Instead of just having it be a shelf to catch the falling dried foods, it is a sort of grate on top of the shelf, and the grate allows the foods to fall through it and onto the shelf, while leaving the appearance of a totally clean and clear shelf, free from food spillages.

So, as I went to get another bite of nuts after we finished what my mom brought over to me today, I had to enlist the help of my mother, because I did not yet know the last piece of information I just shared here. However, she happily showed me her secret means of stealing nuts destined for the trash, and I got my other desired bite of fresh nuts, and I felt good about helping prevent that extra bit of unnecessary waste.

Next time you’re at a grocer with some nut dispensers, perhaps you’ll consider helping prevent waste, eh? ;P Or you could just imagine my mother showing up and saying, “Want some nuts?”

Post-a-day 2017

Tag: stealing

Swiping bubbles

Swiping Nuts