O! Christmas Ham O! Christmas Ham

O! Christmas Ham

O! Christmas Ham

O! Thou were Chosen by a Zombie!

I ran to the store this morning to buy my Christmas Ham. I had to wait about a week for them to get a shipment of the spiral cut glazed hams, which are the kind I like. I saw them the other day at the Other Safeway but the store I frequent had not gotten any yet, so I decided to wait until now to get one.

But this morning I couldn't find any spiral cut hams. Just a huge deep freezer bin full of those water processed ones which are so salty I can't eat them without swelling up like a...like a...well, like a ham.

I asked the Meat Produce Girl where the spiral cut hams were and she said she'd go check for me. And she never came back! Never! I stood and stood and stood, and frankly I realized she must have either warped into an alternate reality or was taking a break, and wasn't going to return.

Another Meat Produce person, a Young Man this time, came out the door where she had disappeared and I asked him what happened to her. "Was she ABSORBED?" I asked.

He looked at me and kind of went goggle-eyed. For a moment there I thought, "Oh, No, English is not his First Language and he will neither know nor care about the amazing, and hilarious nuances of my wit."

Without answering that particular salvo, he said, "I'll go check on her."

And he never returned. Not Never! I tooled down the meat aisle, over to produce, picked up a bag of chocolate chips from the Spice and Baking Aisle and wandered back to the meat counter just as he emerged from the depths of the back room.

"She's wrapping up your ham right now and pricing it." He said.

I freaked! "SHE CAN'T DO THAT!" I shrieked with rising hysteria in my voice, "She cannot just pick some random ham for me! She has no idea what size I want or what price I want or anything. Picking a Ham is a Highly Personal Thing, No One can do it for you! It must be done personally, by me! She's just supposed to be checking whether there ARE any, not CHOOSING one for me!"

How can a meat produce person not KNOW this? Picking a Ham is like choosing a turkey. It's like selecting fruit. You can't just have one handed to you lackadaisically. It's not like getting a pound of hamburger or a package of chicken, this is a Holiday Hunk of Meat. You get the wrong ham and the whole meal is off. The holiday is ruined. Civilization as we know it would come to an end. Entire Cultures have toppled for less. Chef Gordon Ramsey would understand this. He would know. He would feel my pain.

Am I wrong about this? Am I wrong to feel this way? I was babbling "NO! No!, NO!" to the young Meat Produce Man, no doubt sounding like Amy Winehouse singing "They want me to go to rehab, I said, No, No, No!" Only my lyric would be: "They want to choose my ham for me, I said No, No, No!"

He just stood there. "Am I not speaking English?" I asked him with a perky yet strained smile.

"So you don't want the ham, then?" he asked nonchalantly.

American Meat Producers: Lost to All Sense of Propriety.