The day after the second presidential debate I started a post discussing Mitt Romney’s now-infamous binders full of women when, halfway through the first paragraph, I discovered in the snacks basket at my work a package of apple slices (see photo; there are 6 in there). I’ve been in the U.S. for almost ten years now but every now and then a product comes along that manages to elicit the same amount of surprise and befuddlement as when I first visited in 1996. This is how new blog categories are born!
After sharing the experience with my coworkers, who, of course, were familiar with the product, I documented it and took it to Facebook. Though I was alone among Americans in seeing the product for the first time, the disapproval appeared universal. Insert rant about consumerism run amok here…
Opening the package I felt a tinge of the forbidden. But the apple slices were just that, apple slices, and not too tasty at that. Oregon’s apple harvest season is upon us. I look forward to sampling the dozens of varieties of the real, unsliced and unpackaged, thing.