Catching up from a busy day yesterday which means today is a busy day as well. So I’m just going to take a few and recount something that happened yesterday when we were in the city of Tupelo.

But first! A story. Neither Mr. Big Food nor I can say Tupelo without sometimes mispronouncing it on purpose. As you all I am sure know, the accent is on the first syllable: TWO-pell-o. Long ago I was speaking on the phone with a Genius about some problem I was having with my Mac. Genius read off the names of a few cities in the area with authorized repair people. He pronounced it two-PELL-o. My only thought was how can a Genius be so culturally illiterate that he doesn’t know how to correctly pronounce the city of Elvis’s birth?

The thing we had to do in Tupelo took much longer than we’d planned and the only restaurant we wanted to go to was packed so we went to the Goodwill Bookstore where we both found several books. More on these to come. When checking out, the young woman admired my tie-dyed sweatshirt. Ah ha! Mr. Big Food an I immediately launched into our sales pitch for Dyed & Co., I pull it up on Instagram, etc. So Miss M, if you have an order from Tupelo, you’re welcome.

I am in the business of selling books and tie dye.

Go to lunch (wonderful) and then to the other used bookstore. Mr. Big Food found an album he would have gotten were it not for the fact that it was $80 which seemed like a stretch. I found one book for $6.99. The cashier asked if it was cash or card (why?). Cash. Seven-fifty she says as I’m looking for 48 cents in my wallet. I say an elegant, “Huh?” And she says seven-fifty, to which I reply, “Seven times seven is forty-nine.” She replies with an equally elegant, “What?” And I again say, 7 x 7 = 49, not 51.

We do another round or two of this and I begin to realize she has no idea what I’m talking about so I ask, “Mississippi sales tax is seven percent. Seven times…. Does Tupelo have a city sales tax?” She does not know. It’s always been seven point two-five percent.

To tell the truth, I almost just said thanks and walked out the door keeping my two cents. But I didn’t. I just shook my head.

Stopped at a convenience mart on the way out of two and said yes when asked if I wanted my receipt for my small purchase. Did the calculation in the truck and sure enough Tupelo has a quarter of a percent sales tax. Who knew?

I asked Mr. Big Food the rhetorical question of how in the world you could not know this piece of information?

#citizenship

To work!