The forbidden picture

Today is a gray and damp Saturday but I am enjoying myself. I went this morning to Zumba and then to Price-Rite. At Price-Rite I followed my mother's advice of always go food shopping when you are hungry because that is when it is the most fun.

I did have fun. The carts there are huge and there are all these traffic jams, leading to all these opportunities to laugh and joke around with your fellow customers. Also I have this new appreciation of all this international stuff you can find, for cheap, at Price-Rite. They have half an aisle of Italian things, olive oils and artichoke hearts and such. And Latino vegetables, things like yucca and yams.

You find yourself wanting to look at everything. For instance one bin held cottage-cheese-sized cartons of ... I picked it up to take a look .... raw brown sugar. In another aisle I heard someone calling to someone else to look at the raw sugar cane. That sounds as if you could make your own rum! A possibility that must be explored.

Price-Rite does not get enough credit for all this stuff. With which, I finally took out my camera in the spice department. I wanted to photograph the mother lode of MSG ...

.

... and then I wanted to give an idea of the cornucopia of spices.

"Excuse me, miss!" A staffer was calling to me. "We don't allow pictures in here."

I stood there red-handed, astonished.

"You don't?" was all I could think of to say.

"No pictures of the spices," he said.

"Oh," I said. Then I said I was sorry, it was just for my personal web log, whatever. He was very nice so, no problem there. He said it was the manager's rule, not his. But that is astonishing, you know? No pictures in Price-Rite. How strange! And how do you forbid customers from taking pictures, anyway? No wonder nobody knows what goodies may be had in Price-Rite.

After that all I wanted to do was take pictures. I kept thinking about it! Because it was forbidden to me. It is like wanting to publish a picture of Leonard Pennario that belongs to some newspaper and not to me. I wanted forbidden photos of Price-Rite!

Anyway, here it is, the forbidden picture.

The one I took the instant the staffer was telling me to cease and desist!

It should be part of some exhibit, perhaps at the Albright-Knox, of banned art.

It is masterful!