By Bronwyn Romy, Guest Columnist
The Sweet Potato
I’ve always considered myself a refined woman. I volunteer at the library, wear sensible cardigans, and never once in my fourty-three years have I uttered a curse word stronger than “fiddlesticks.” But I have one fatal flaw, one Achilles’ heel that would ultimately lead to my downfall: an unholy obsession with white beans swimming in hot sauce, paired with a slab of buttery cornbread.
“They’re just so wholesome,” I’d tell anyone who’d listen, which was usually just Sassy, our family’s medium-sized dog of ambiguous heritage. Sassy didn’t care about my dietary choices. Sassy cared about kibble.
Which is precisely why, on that fateful Tuesday afternoon at the grocery, I found myself in the pet food aisle, bending at a geometrically unfortunate angle to retrieve a twenty-pound bag of “Beef ‘n’ Biscuit Bonanza” from the bottom shelf.
The previous evening’s dinner had been particularly inspired: a full pot of white beans, slow-cooked to creamy perfection, absolutely drowned in Tabasco sauce, with three pieces of cornbread on the side. I’d gone back for seconds. And thirds. Sassy had watched with what could only be described as canine concern.
Now, as I bent down—knees locked, posterior elevated in a pose that would make any yoga instructor weep—my digestive system staged a violent coup d’état.
The sound that emerged was not subtle. It was not dainty. It was the sonic equivalent of a tuba falling down a staircase, a foghorn declaring war, a Harley-Davidson backfiring in a cathedral. It echoed off the linoleum floors, bounced off the shelves of Fancy Feast and Meow Mix, and rippled through the very fabric of suburban grocery store decorum.
Time stopped.
A man in a Titans jersey, pushing his cart past the aisle entrance, froze mid-stride. His eyes went wide. His mouth fell open. And then, with the volume of someone who’d just witnessed Bigfoot eating a hot dog, he screamed: “HOLY SH—!”
He caught himself, but only barely, slapping a hand over his mouth like he’d almost revealed state secrets.
Three feet away, a small child—couldn’t have been more than four—began to wail. “MOMMYYYYYYY!” the boy shrieked, his face crumpling like a used tissue. “THE LADY RIPPED ONE LIKE DADDY DOES! MOMMYYYYY!” His tiny fists rubbed at his eyes as he stumbled backward into a display of gourmet cat treats.
But the coup de grâce, the final nail in my social coffin, came from Mrs. Beatrice Henderson, president of the Draffenville Duck & Deer Drive Homeowners Association and notorious busybody. Beatrice stood at the far end of the aisle, clutching a can of tuna, her face arranged in an expression of such profound disappointment that it could have curdled milk at fifty paces.
“That’s not funny, Miss!” Beatrice declared, her voice dripping with the kind of judgment usually reserved for war criminals and people who don’t return their shopping carts. “You should be more lady-like!”
I was still frozen in my bent position like some sort of mortified lawn ornament, and I felt my face ignite. The heat started at my collar and spread upward until I was certain my head would simply detach and float away like a hot air balloon of shame.
I grabbed the dog food with trembling hands, stood up with all the dignity I could muster (which was approximately zero), and speed-walked toward the checkout lanes. My cart squeaked accusatorily with each step. Behind me, I could hear the little boy still sobbing and Beatrice muttering something about “the decline of civilization.”
I abandoned my cart—which contained eggs, bread, milk, and tragically, two more cans of white beans—grabbed only the dog food, and fled to the self-checkout. I scanned the bag with shaking hands, threw exact cash at the machine, and ran for my Camry like I was escaping a crime scene.
Because, in a way, I was.
That evening, I stood in my kitchen, staring at the remaining white beans in my pantry. Five bags. Five beautiful, treacherous bags. With a heavy heart and heavier memories, I began transferring them into a paper bag.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the beans. “You were delicious. You were perfect. But you betrayed me in my hour of need.”
Sassy sat nearby, watching with the patient wisdom only dogs possess.
I drove to the food bank the next morning and donated all the beans, along with my three bottles of hot sauce and a solemn promise to myself: Never again.
I switched to oatmeal. Plain oatmeal. With nothing on it.
Sassy approved.
As for Beatrice Henderson, she dined out on the story for months, telling anyone who’d listen about “the incident in Aisle 7,” though she never mentioned me by name. She didn’t have to. In a town the size of D-Ville, everyone knew.
And I, Bronwyn Romy, learned the hardest lesson of all: that a woman’s reputation, so carefully built over decades, can be destroyed in approximately 2.5 seconds of gastrointestinal rebellion.
I now shop at a different grocery store, location undisclosed. Twenty minutes away. At 6 AM.
Just to be safe.
