On Vanilla

It's everywhere, at all the stores. In fact, it dominates. There's only one or two boxes of anything different: Say chocolate or coconut cream.

"Chocolate? Coconut? We haven't had them here in ... oh ... years now," says the store owner.

"Chocolate? Isn't that queer to want it?" says a young woman who was working the cash register.

It's as if you hear, behind their words, the subtext of What's wrong with you?

Your desire for anything different than vanilla might as well be illegal. You think: Why doesn't the legislature pass a law against all other tastes?

Then you realize that such a law would be redundant.
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The above came to me between 5-5:30 a.m. in the middle of December 1996.