Organic Wit (07.05.22)

Is wit even wittier in the co-op? I think so. After all, the colors often seem brighter…the lettuce greener, the dairy whiter, the bulk foods more like themselves somehow, in their bins. The orderly procession of cartons are well-lit behind doors that release a puff of cooler air when opened. The light coming through the windows always seems like morning light. Also, sometimes, the smiles are wider, the workers more robust as they carry those cartons along the aisles. (I think this way because I am a romantic, and also, I have never worked in a co-op, which I suspect is a pretty hard job.)

So why shouldn’t wit be wittier? I set down my almond milk and asparagus spears the other day before a beautiful specimen of young womanhood, vibrant, lively, with a head of tousled bright pink hair, and a truly startling pair of earrings. One doesn’t like to stare, but I stared, and then I asked her about the earrings, saying “I can’t quite make them out.” She held still for a minute then we both started to laugh. “Stay Back, Karen!” her earrings said, the words blazoned on a good-sized and aggressively pink spray bottle, nozzle at the ready, to repel any Karens that wandered in for kombucha.

(From omnipotent Wikipedia: “Karen is a pejorative term for a woman, usually White, perceived as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is normal…depictions may include demanding to ‘speak to the manager’.”)

We laughed some more and talked for a minute. “I have another pair; they make my uncle mad,” she said. I looked them up on the artist’s Etsy site (https://www.etsy.com/shop/NicoleBrennanDraws…) The young woman’s alternate earrings are in the shape of a juice box, with a straw. The box is labeled “Conservative Tears. 0% Decency. No Science Added.” So now I’m imagining this young woman at a picnic table, earrings flashing in the sun, with a sulky uncle nearby.

I am reminded of a sign carried by youth at the March for Science a few years ago. “What do we want?” it said. “Time Travel! When do we want it? Irrelevant!”

Wit is never out of style, particularly when it provokes laughter among strangers, and among generations.