"black walnuts"

Being the night owl that I am, dealing with odd people first thing in the morning isn’t the greatest idea. I enjoy a nice, leisurely morning. Get up at 9, putter around, eat something eventually, and perhaps brew a pot of coffee. By 11 am or noon, I am fully functional, ready to take on the world. However, my schedule is not always conducive to that schedule, so at times I must flex with the real world. (I usually flex with my ideal schedule between 7 and 10 times per week.)

Tuesday morning, 10:10 am, into the shop marches what looked like winner of the “odd customer of the day” award. I had just gotten a cup of coffee at 10, but had lost it because I set it somewhere that I could find it. (turned out to be right on the countertop, in plain view.) A man and his son come in and start looking over the fudge case, seeing what flavors are there. I, being the groggy person I was at the time, let them look for a few seconds without saying anything. (Tourist fashion is another interesting topic. perhaps I will write about it another day. But the son was wearing cut-off skinny jeans, a t-shirt, and a HUGE bright purple dress shirt that was flapping in the air.) After a few moments, the man looks me in the eye and says “black walnuts.” What does that mean? I was so confused. “Can I help you, sir?” I replied. “I want black walnuts” he told me. I explained to him that we did not have any fudge with black walnuts in it, but I had lots with English walnuts. He tried one, and after chewing with deep thoughts running through his mind as he analyzed the chocolate, he told me “it would be better with black walnuts.” The man and his son turned from the counter then and had a small argument. The father didn’t think his son had ever tried a black walnut before, but the son insisted that he had. (Obviously it was a big deal to them both. Enough to carry the argument on for a while.)

Then a woman and her daughter walked into the shop. They were the other half of the family. They stopped about 10 feet away from my counter and began to read aloud the name of every fudge flavor. I offered her a sample of fudge. She took me up on trying the pumpkin fudge. I described it to her before I gave the sample to her explaining that it was by far our most unique flavor because of there being real pumpkin in the batch. She popped the little piece of fudge in her mouth and started chewing with concentration. You could see the wheels turning in her head as she wasn’t sure what to think of the candy. Finally she swallowed and immediately informed me that “someone cooked this batch of fudge too high. It’s grainy.” “That’s the real pumpkin in it” I told her. She then stood there are mumbled about it for a bit and finally came out and told me, “well, I think that is a very unique fudge!” Her daughter standing nearby in the driest tone of voice (half asleep, I’m sure.) tells her mom, “maybe that’s why he said it was a unique flavor when he gave you the sample.” The woman then informed me that she liked it and that she was going to look for a recipe for it so she could make it at home.

The man of the family stepped back up to my counter and asked me, “so are you from East or West Germany?” First thought in my head is “I don’t know where you’ve been, but last time I checked, Germany hasn’t been divided like that in decades.” I told him that I had grown up right here, in Michigan. “No, I mean, originally! Are you from East Germany?” No…. I am American! I’m from right here!!! “So then, are your parents from East Germany?” No, I am part Danish and part Hungarian, not German at all! The man finally shrugged and told me, “you people in this area have the weirdest accent. Like, it’s a dialect from another place.” What does that mean? Why do people always have to criticize me for speaking the language of my country as if I were from another country? Is it because I have a solid grip on the language and actually follow rules of grammar? Who knows.

They left right after that conversation. Not a moment too soon. I grabbed my coffee, drank the whole thing all at once and then promptly made my way right down to the coffee shop for a second cup. I knew it was going to be a long day without something to wake me up to attempt to process what I had just been through.

I must say, one of my favorite things about my job is seeing people from all over the world. There are so many personalities, characters… The world is full of interesting people. It truly does take all kinds to make the world what it is. It may be highly interesting to experience the extremities of personality, but why not meet them and have a story to tell?

“We could learn a lot from crayons; some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names, but they all have learned to live together in the same box.”