(End of Foreword.)
This post is a little late, but I figured it would be nice to get it in print.
The other day I had two amazing experiences at Albert Heijn. They made me question everything I think about humanity.
First. I gather that in most Albert Heijns there is a little coffee machine. You can have a cup gratis, even with sugar or creamer if you would like. Well, the homeless and the elderly certainly do like! And me of course, because I plan on being homeless and elderly or either some day.
Now, another strand of this story is that the Dutch are rather unfriendly. I'm the kind of guy who likes to wave to people on the street, smile, say hello, etc. I don't get much of a response from people, except the occasional irritated expression that implies: "Would you like something of me my clearly foreign friend? I say you are clearly foreign because you are greeting me, and the Dutch do not greet strangers: we are rather unfriendly." .
Anyway, so I am getting my cup of coffee, and look to the "old person bench" . And there is an ENORMOUSLY old lady. Like at least 80, maybe 90. Very small, very frail, very almost dead. But I raise my cup to her and smile, and what does she do? She winks at me. A huge, full-on, sexy wink. This was not, contrary to what some of you might be thinking, the grossest thing I've ever experienced. That's not to say it got me hard, but it was fascinating. For a second, this woman was so young again in my eyes.
Second. After the coffee experience, I walked over to the licorice aisle, to get my beloved sugar-free licorices. I was inspecting two bags that looked good, and thought that they both said "hard/zout" , which means "hard/salty" . But on closer inspection, one of them said "hard/zoet" . Well, I assumed 'zoet' meant sweet, and so I hailed an Albert Heijn worker to investigate further.
I asked him the difference between 'zout' and 'zoet' . He raised his eyes, struggling to put his thoughts into words, so I helped him by saying I knew the former, but not the latter, and asked him if 'zoet' meant sweet. This man immediately became the ultimate connoisseur of licorice, capable of making the finest, subtlest distinctions between flavors. I can only approximate for you the deliciousness of his reply, but it was something like this:
Yes, sweet. But... no, not exactly sweet. It is sort of like a sweet, but with a little... [and here he made a gesture that involved scrunching his shoulders, squinting his eyes, pursing his lips, putting his thumbs to his index fingers in a pinching gesture and rotating them ever so slightly as if he was giving someone a slow-motion titty-twister] ... with a little 'mmm' .
I am in love with this man. A day later he helped me not find baking soda.
+j
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