The Whole (Wheat) Story

This morning I went out to drop Aimee and Sierra off at school, buy groceries and an internet card, drop off a memory stick to have photos printed, and buy whole wheat flour. The traffic was somewhat worse than normal, but all went fairly smoothly until I got to the flour mill. (Call me Little Red Hen.) In all fairness to the mill’s employees, it still went fairly smoothly. We just have vastly different ideas about how things ought to proceed when someone (me) wants to buy whole wheat flour.

First off, I parked in a spot that wasn’t meant for me, outside of a door I wasn’t meant to go in. So I moved. Then I went in to the right door. But the receptionist was busy, so I took a seat. It felt a little like waiting in a Dr’s waiting room, but there weren’t any magazines. Sadly. When she called me over to her desk, I confirmed that I was there to do business, and she confirmed that I could indeed buy whole wheat flour, but the minimum is 50 kg. I had suspected this, so it wasn’t a huge shock, but still 50 kg. Wow.

Next she printed a receipt for me on a printer that made that rrr-t-t-t-t-t-rrrrr sound from the late 80s and had those lines of holes down the sides of the paper. While that took a minute or so to print one page, she wrote a receipt as well. To cover the bases, I guess. I signed the paper and sealed the deal. Or did I?

Next I went to pay the lady at the next desk. I paid about 70 cents a kilo, I think. Is that good? After she took the printed receipt to be signed by some higher-up, I signed again, sealing the deal and confirming my commitment and loyalty to my 50 kgs of whole wheat flour. Maybe.

I returned the receipt to the first lady, who kindly stapled my two papers together, gave me a third paper and sent me over to the warehouse to collect my long-awaited flour. Sweet flour, how I long to see you.

A man greeted me at the door of the warehouse, but alas. He passed my paper on to another man with one of those razor-thin “beards”, but that doesn’t have any bearing on things. This man asked me to come into his office, where he wrote up a receipt for me. This paper included pertinent information, such as the area of town I live in and my license plate number. One can never be too careful when selling flour. I signed this paper, certainly cementing my relationship to the flour.

At this sweet moment in time, another man appeared, burdened down by the 50 kg bag of whole wheat flour on his head. I skipped merrily over to my car, unlocked the back door and clapped with glee as he placed it into my possession. I blew him kisses as I drove toward the gate. At long last, my dear flour, we’re on our way home. Or are we?

At the gate, the guard came and asked to see my papers. He took them, looked in my back window, copied something from my papers into his little book, gave them back to me, and wished me a good day. I sighed as I drove out on to the road.

I’m still sighing, actually.