A Plethora of Choices

It is said that one learns something new every day, and I find that, on average, to be true. I say on average because there have been days that have been almost wholly useless, instructionally speaking, and then there are other days wherein I learn five, six, even seven new things, sometimes unpleasant and mostly relating to my Darling Children.

Sadly, it seems that most of the “new things” I learn are things that I really should have known already. These would be things such as: if one puts a scoop of cocoa in the filter with the coffee, the result will not be coffee mocha, but rather a clogged filter and a resultant mess all over the kitchen counter. And if one forgets that one still has coffee in the coffee decanter and attempts to brew a fresh pot, the result will be, again, a mess all over the counter. I begin to see a pattern here…

At any rate, on Thursday of last week I learned another new thing. That is that spiced jellybeans, if not actually the work of evil, are at the very least disgusting. The purchase of same made sense at the time; I had been wanting some jellybeans, and so when I found a seventy-five percent sale, I leapt at the opportunity to fulfill my craving. But faced with the reality that only one bag of the regular candy was even rubbing elbows with freshness, I wavered and then decided that perhaps I could strike out into new territory and try a new thing, that new thing being spiced jellybeans.

Now, I agree that I really should have known better. My previous excursions into trifling with my already-set notions of what foods I do and do not like have been disappointing. But hope springs eternal, as the poet says, and so I paid my seventy-five cents and took my chances.

One handful was more than enough, and the rest of the bag has now taken up residence in the bottom of the trash barrel. The cinnamon pervaded everything, and the ginger alternately burned and numbed my tongue. Even my favorite flavor, the pungent licorice, was no match for whatever horrible blend of spices had been used. And if there is anything nastier than a lime jellybean, it is a lime jellybean that has been adulterated with cinnamon, ginger, and, for all I know, cayenne pepper.

The whole experience, far from leaving only a bad taste in my mouth (household hint: a good dry martini will rinse most unpleasant flavors from the palate), gave me ‘furiously to think,’ as Hercules Poirot would put it. Why on earth do people persist in tampering with successful formulas? What makes us think that if one kind of something is good, then thirty-three kinds of something would be better?

Gentle readers, please understand that my grouchiness is not non-partisan. To be sure, it is wonderful to have many, many flavors of ice cream, rather than only vanilla. And I know that I highly preferred the 96-count box of crayons, with its delightful array of colors never found in nature, to the 8-count, 16-count, or even 48-count boxes. But enough is enough!

Let us start with the jellybean example. When I was a girl (not that long ago, mind you), I remember seeing really only one kind of jellybean: large, kidney-bean shapes that when jostled together in the bag made a whole collage of purple, pink, red, orange, white, yellow, green, and black. The flavors, although indicated fairly efficiently by color, were vague enough to allow for endless disputes over whether pink was supposed to be strawberry or watermelon, and whether the red, then, was strawberry or cherry. And which of us has passed through childhood without wondering what, exactly, the white was supposed to be? No, not coconut. No, I think not vanilla. Pineapple? Hmmm. Let me just try another to see.

Ahem. The humble jellybean had not snob distinction; there were those who claimed to be jellybean ‘connoisseurs,’ but while they had their ranking systems and their bartering for their favorites, they were still using the same beans that the rest of us were. The jellybean had a purpose, and it served that purpose well: it delivered a jolt of pure sugar to the system with the minimum of fuss, and with a veneer of fun that was guaranteed to please all but the very pickiest of candy snobs.

How the jellybean has changed! Now there are gourmet jellybeans, with hundreds of specially blended flavors, such that when one buys a box of the miniature beans it comes with a key, and perhaps even suggestions for which flavors blend well together. There are spiced jellybeans and speckled jellybeans and jellybean bags mixed without the licorice. There are seventy-nine cent bags of jellybeans, and four-dollar bags of jellybeans. It’s gotten to where it is hard to find just one bag of regular, plain jellybeans, with the standard assortment. Whose idea was this? Who is responsible for creating snob appeal for jellybeans?

But then, it is the same thing I see when I go to the supermarket. There are those who will argue with me, saying that giving consumers more choices gives consumers more control. I can agree to a certain extent; it’s nice to be able to choose from seven varieties of hot dog, rather than one, and I do like being able to pick and choose between flavors and textures of bread on my supermarket shelf. But, heavens! Do we really need this much choice when it comes to, oh, toilet paper?

Imagine, please, my consternation as I stood in the paper goods aisle of my local grocer. With one hand I supported myself on the handle of the shopping cart and with the other I feebly clutched a slightly foxed coupon for a certain brand of toilet tissue. I had found the correct brand, but my mind boggled at the many choices I faced before I could leave that particular aisle. Was the single roll or the double roll the better value? Here, there were nine single rolls, there, four double rolls. But then there was the package that promised even more softness than the regular rolls. I was reduced, gentle reader, to kneeling in the floor, imploring the little tags on the shelf for the special knowledge I would need to make a wise decision.

Perhaps, though, it is because I am a writer, and as such am forced to produce one version of whatever I write. I do not write an essay and then alternately pad it and cut it in half, to please those who want to read more and those who want to read less. I only get one chance, and so you, the gentle reader, make your decision on whether to enjoy my writing based on only one sample, that which I fatuously believe to be my very best.

So perhaps you see why I am so confused by having to choose from levels of quality within one brand name! I say, enough variety! Let us work together, companies of America, to produce just one type of toilet tissue per brand name, and let that one type be the very best that you produce. At the very least, you will be sparing my local grocer the spectacle of seeing me overcome in the midst of the rolls of tissues, struggling to remember how many feet there are to a yard and how to compute that and also how to assign a numeric value to the advantage of double quilting. Until that halcyon day when I can buy just one brand with confidence, the poor man must witness me with tear-stained cheeks, waving futilely a coupon for one four-pack or larger of toilet tissue and emitting sobs for help. If you see me as well, please be kind and pass by. Or better yet, press a small bag of regular jellybeans (with the licorice ones included) into my fevered hand. Your good deed will be appreciated.