Right of Return

No this is not about those dispossessed Palestinians and their descendants sweeping across the Israeli border to reclaim their homes after the 1948 war or subsequent ones or seeking restitution for their bull-dozed dwellings to make room for settlements.

I’m talking about bringing a cantaloupe back to Costco. Over the past six years I have taken back denims and sweaters for poor fits. I once returned Peggy’s unused running shoes we’d purchased three years earlier. But I never had the audacity to ask for a refund on a melon. With some trepidation I took my place on line and opened the shopping bag depositing a single cantaloupe on the counter.

Actually it wasn’t really a cantaloupe. It was one of those hybrid varieties. Honey-Loupe? Cant-Dew? Casaba? Persian or Cranshaw melon? In any case it cost $5.49 for two. The one we had opened was malodorous to the nose and noxious to the tongue. It should have been sent to a lab for forensic testing.  A disgrace to the melon family. You call yourself a melon?

My decision to return the un-cut other was as recompense on behalf of the hundreds of unripe melons I’d bought over the years which refused to sweeten after thirty days. One never knows if the damn thing is ripening or rotting.

I could say I was seized by two sumo wrestler security guards and thrown into the meat locker or pressed into indentured servitude hawking cheese samples at the end of aisle 304……but that would all be fantasy.

In fact they asked no questions. The clerk simply looked at me the way any compassionate and weary worker would look at her senile uncle who lives in the attic and is allowed down once a year for Thanksgiving dinner. I expect they added my name to a list of crazies for abusing the privilege. Maybe my membership is hanging by a gossamer thread. I won’t know till my next adventure on the return line when I might bring back an apricot with teeth-marks.

The right of return as practiced by Costco may be the eleventh commandment Moses forgot on his way down from Mt. Sinai. It has now become one of our most unalienable rights. It eliminates buyer’s remorse and redresses grievances. That may be why Israel has no Costco. Fear of being overcome by melons.