The Exact Ratio: Good Thing I’m So Flexible

We stood facing each other. My wife, about to leave to go shopping, was desperate. It was a Saturday afternoon and she wanted to finish food shopping as quickly as possible. The only obstacles standing in her way were one-and-a-half ounce cartons of raisins at Whole Foods.

“I can get almost everything I need at Randall’s,” she said, “except your raisins.”

“What do you mean?”

“They don’t have the size you like.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought much about the travails of shopping. That was my wife’s bailiwick. Surely, she wasn’t going to cross the raisin line though? The dried fruit equator? It wasn’t conceivable.

“Can I get you another size?”

What!?! This couldn’t be happening. Every morning, I eat yogurt with fruit, typically berries but twice a week, with raisins. I like it. I like raisins. I’ve searched far and wide for the exact size box containing the exact amount of raisins that preserves the exact ratio of raisin to yogurt that I like. Most raisins come in groups of a half-dozen 1 ounce boxes, but that didn’t work. I had to have 1.5 ounce boxes. Any other amount wouldn’t do. There was no substitute. How could she even ask?

I weighed my words. “They don’t have them at Randall’s?” A delaying tactic.

“No, I’ve got to drive a half hour to Whole Foods. It’s always a mob scene there. All for one-and-a-half ounce raisins.” She looked on the verge of a breakdown. “How about a compromise?” she asked. “How about the tub?”

The tub? A unique concept in raisin packaging, an advance akin to Watson & Crick’s discovery of DNA. No more were these wrinkled warriors restricted to tiny cartons. They had been liberated into larger boxes, fifteen ounces or more. Could I compromise? I would have to measure out the exact amount, adding an additional time factor for weighing the raisins and another for cleaning the dirty measuring scoop to my breakfast routine. Was I willing to change my lifestyle and shackle myself to these new chores?

“Would you be flexible enough to use the tub?” she asked again.

Could I be flexible? Me? Not flexible? The question was absurd. Where did she get the idea? “I think I can manage,” I said. It would require some serious adjustments to my morning, but I was Mr. Flexibility.

“Thank you,” she said, the weight of a mountain of dehydrated grapes lifted from her shoulders. She kissed me goodbye and off she went.

It was no big deal, I told myself. I could handle a change to my raisin ritual as long as she didn’t mess with my Greek yogurt, because if it’s not exactly 5.3 ounces my whole day is ruined!

How about you? Are you as flexible as Mr. Flexible?