Excuse me?

On my way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art the other day, having just enjoyed a speedy M2 Limited bus ride up Madison Avenue, I decided to grab a little snack before feeding my soul with transcendent artistic treasures. I set my internal GPS towards the ultimate destination of the Dean & Deluca on 85th & Madison, knowing that I would most likely be able to squelch my craving from within their wide variety of offerings.

AH! Cole slaw! I caught sight of it sitting on the shelf in a quarter pound deli container and it called out to me with all it's crisp, mayonnaise-y sweetness. I knew it would be just the perfect thing to tide me over for the next few hours until my 8pm sushi outing. A rather unusual choice, I'm sure, but it just seemed like it would really be the perfect 5 o'clock snack. Since the weather was absolute perfection, I started across 85th street, content to eat my slaw al fresco while in transit.

As I walked, I saw a young man and young woman down the block, conversing in a jovial manner and positioned in such a way that in order to pass them, I have to walk right between them. No matter, for I'm a veteran pedestrian and prepared for any challenge that should come my way on the concrete. As I pass, however, I was certainly NOT prepared for this:

Young Man: Hey, that looks really good (he points to my cole slaw)...where'd you get that!?!

Me: Dean & Deluca, around the corner on 85th street.

Now, the cole slaw was good but did it look good enough to attract cat calls from passersby? Hmmm....

I've come up with two possible motivations for the young man's attraction to the slaw:

1. The girl's family came from a long line of cabbage farmers and he was trying to impress her with his love for all-things cabbage.

2. He, like me, had been looking for that perfect 5 o'clock snack.

I guess we'll never know.