Jonathan 2.0

Ruder. Brasher. Speaks his mind. A real New Yorker. At least that's what I'm striving for.

Especially when I notice a sign at The Fairway grocery store (essentially a cheaper Whole Foods in Harlem looking out right on the Hudson River) display with several kinds of extra-virgin olive oil and some small bread slices for sampling. It read, "Please be considerate: dip your bread only once."

"Why would they even need to post a sign like that?" I thought, lifting a piece of bread dripping with green, ripe oil to my mouth. As I took a bite of that full-bodied richness, I noticed the woman next to me with a piece of bread with a bite taken out of it. It all happened in slow motion: her moving the bread toward a bowel of olive oil. My thinking, "This can't be happening." Her dipping the bread, bite side first, into the smooth, thick liquid.

I was appalled. Horrified, more by her manners than by her generosity with her own cooties. As she walked away and I closed my gaping mouth, I realized that I missed a perfect chance for confrontation. She deserved public rebuke. It was my duty to perform the civil equivalent of a citizen's arrest. "EXCUSE ME, ma'am!" (Ma'am can come off as a bit condescending in the Northeast) "I can't believe what you just did! You are rude!" Her chastening would be completed by the sudden sensation wet liquid fat in her face--flung there by me--which would then drip down and stain her dress in great moist globs.