A Rancho Santa Fe Moment

I’ve never been good at snappy comebacks and witty one-liners.  I always think of what I wished I had said about two hours after the opportunity has vanished.  But today I did okay.

I was in the local grocery store known as Harvest Ranch Market.  It’s an expensive little place, but known in the community for its superb selection of fresh fish and meats. I imagine if Julia Child had lived in my community she would have shopped here. The butcher is a cancer survivor himself—he calls me “Princess” and saves the best raw bones for the deerhounds.  And sometimes, when he’s run out of the cheap hamburger meat, he gives me the good stuff but charges me the lower price.  Shhhssssh—don’t tell anyone!  I guess you could say I’m a regular.

So today I was in the store, and I noticed a very beautiful woman, first standing at the meat counter, then later in the vegetable section.  She was tall and elegant and dressed in a lovely coral colored dress, low cut and sleeveless, and to quote Warren Zevon—“Her hair was PERFECT!”  She wore towering heels and her sparkly jewelry matched her dress—at 5 pm on a warm Saturday afternoon.  As it turned out, she hit the check-out line right in front of me.  I couldn’t help myself—I said to her, “You look so lovely!  I hope that you’re going someplace nice this evening.”  She looked down at me and said, “No, I’m on my way home—from a party on our yacht” and strolled out the door.

At this moment, the guy at the cash register says to me, “Will that be paper or plastic?”  I said to him, “If you please, Sir, I’ll carry my meager groceries in whatever the lady with the yacht was using.”  The couple behind me in line snickered.   Aspen’s got nothing on Rancho Santa Fe.