want a cubyrop candy?

Gabe is off all week due to Spring Break. My options include tolerating his nocturnal, raccoon-like habits which extend to rummaging through every food-bearing receptacle in the house all night (between blowing away zombies and antlions in Half-Life 2), or coercing him into the odd field trip in a futile attempt to nudge him toward humanoid behavior. Today, we opted for a field trip.

So, piled into the Soobie--Gabe and Jeff in back, Olivia riding shotgun (after convincing her dad he had more leg-room that way,) we forged the dusty--or at least exhausty--trail to H Mart in Catonsville.

The real name of H Mart is Han Ah Reum, and heaven-knows-what in Korean characters, but they helpfully gave it the pronounceable moniker for the benefit of the subset of customers who appear to hail from many latitudes of the Americas.

Our goals were, in part, specific: Pocky--a stick-pretzel snack dipped in a variety of flavors, and Ramune sodas, otherwise known as “marble drinks” for the glass marble trapped in the bottle’s narrow neck, over which the drink must flow to reach your mouth.

Things I was surprised by:
Fuji apples the size of softballs. We bought 4.
Durians. I imagined these spiny fruits to be kiwi-sized. They were bigger than footballs. We bought none.
Green bean popsicles. Gabe, deciding they would be perfect for his friend Matt’s birthday, went on to select several accompaniments: A canister of wasabi peas, a can of Grass Jelly Soda (which I can tell you, based on personal experience, is overly sweet Coke with gelatinous blobs floating in it. yum.), and one of the aforementioned gargantalossal apples.

Not surprisingly as these adventures go, Gabe’s science teacher called my Palm Centro as we were contemplating packages of seaweed roughly the size of boogie boards. Seems that Gabe neglected to mention that he needed to bring in $14 for an upcoming science center field trip. So, I am trying to get the gist of this while steering out of the way of shoppers who actually want seaweed*, and Jeff is scrambling to stick a pen and sticky-note in my face in case I need it but I am ignoring it because I’ve determined that I don’t, but am still multi-tasking while on the phone. Which means temporarily disregarding family members. Whose feelings get hurt. Jeff disappears.

You hurt Dad’s feelings, says Olivia.

I was trying to hear Gabe’s teacher, I say.

But this is just like what you always tell me, she says, He doesn’t understand.

So we hope he will not go far, and a short while later, after we’ve snagged shark-themed ice cream bars, Hello Kitty marshmallows, and mango juice, we send Gabe out to find him while we navigate the checkout lane (which is roughly 2 feet wide.)

Olivia exits ahead of me in order to corral her dad and brother, so by the time I push the cart out she has them in line.

Now I am home thinking that we should have bought more in the way of actual food, but noting that one could not identify the components of just any product offered at H Mart, due to the fact that I can’t decipher Asian characters of any sort.

*note to Fred, my brother-in-law, who did actually want seaweed. I got confused in the seaweed aisle. But don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll go back.