I think I've become a vegetarian...

I don't eat a lot of meat as it is. After my last trip to the grocery store, I think that I'll be eating even less. A woman and her two kids (okay, I'll correct that, because someone will surely write to me and ask "How do you know that they were her two kids?)...A woman and two kids, who appeared to be about 3 and 6 years, were in the meat aisle of the store. I was thinking how unsanitary it was for the kids to be placing their hands in the meat cooler and then touching their faces...e.coli and salmonella thoughts were running through my head.

That's when I noticed the older boy had a very snotty nose and wiped it with his hand frequently. That's when I noticed that many packages of meat, especially the hamburger, had small holes. The older boy was using his snotty fingers to innoculate the meat in the case with his germs. I am fairly certain that the mother knows he did this. Her peripheral vision can't be that bad. I spoke up with "Um, I don't think you want to poke your fingers into the raw meat. You could get sick!"

His mother tells me "Oh, he's already sick. He's staying home from school because he has a cold and infected throat." I put the pot roast back into the meat case.

I said, well raw meat could have some dangerous germs that could make him even sicker, but she just laughed. I added "Wow, a lot of holes are in these packages of meat," but mommy says nothing. The kid grins and says that poking holes in the hamburger is the most fun because it "squishes." I don't think I like hamburger anymore.

I couldn't just walk off and say/do nothing. I let the meat manager know what had happened, and that the mom reported that the kid had a cold and infected throat. "His ass will be infected if I catch him doing that!" Then he sighed and took a cart out to collect the poked meat. I counted 20 packages.

Later I wondered, what happened to that meat? Was it thrown out? Was it repackaged and put back into the case? Ick.

From time to time, I pick up hotdogs from the case with teeth marks. I don't think that's a clever marketing gimmick. I've picked up apples and banannas with teeth marks as well. I have seen kids old enough to know better using their fingernails to leave nail marks in fruit. I've seen parents allowing their children to play with the candy that they have no intentions of buying. If me or one of my siblings had done such a thing, back in draconian days, we would have regretted it, and we'd still be remembering the lesson.

I remember the good old days when candy was behind a glass counter to keep kids from stealing or damaging it. Too bad that that there isn't a way to do that now with foods that can be damaged by children. But what is really too bad is parents who don't control their children. Who allow them to express themselves any way they want. They'll have a rather rude awakening one day and will probablly wonder why their parents never taught them better.