This freak relationship Norwegians have to strawberries may be hard for any foreigner to understand, but I’ll try my best to make you afraid, very afraid. My experiences working in the fruit and vegetables department at a grocery shop have given me many a nightmare about the demonic berries and their blind worshippers.
Every summer it all starts so innocently. The first Belgian strawberries arrive in shops in June, in moderate plastic boxes, and nobody really cares. They are expensive, and they have no taste (besides, Belgium is too close to Nazi-Germany, and we can’t have that, can we?), but still, you can bet your ass that during the day a couple of customers will have mashed 1/3 of the berries in the box just for fun, to find out if the berries are of the right tasty texture, and then, when the berries are mashed, they don’t want to buy them because they are mashed, so you have to throw away the whole box. Money well spent, hey, but that’s life dealing with the public in the service industry, I know. But then comes July, and the savage beast in the average Norwegian strawberry customer slowly awakens to the sight of the first NORWEGIAN strawberries. Normally shy, quiet and civilized Norwegians all of a sudden turn into wild, nasty gorgons, and they all worship the same god: The perfect punnet of strawberries.
Having worked in a shop for many years, I know that the myth of the perfect punnet of strawberries is just that, a myth. Berries come from nature, and nature fucks up pretty often, but you can’t educate beasts, so the knowledge stays with me, and me alone as I from a far watch it all take place. Like the holy crusades the strawberry customers form long lines of troops like on some prehistoric battlefield as soon as the first crates of strawberries have been put out in the morning by the most courageous member of the staff (or just the one to loose the paper, rock, scissor match in the backroom). Then it all begins. The crusaders storm the fruit counters like greyhounds on speed, they toss about the crates to get to the best punnets at the bottom, because logic says the best one is always at the bottom. They claw, shove, hiss and spit, elderly women bang their younger and stronger opponents on their heads with their walkers and canes, distinguished middle aged businessmen blind the others with squirts from their lethal ink pens, young girls come running from the other side of the shop and use their stiletto heels to do a pole vault over the crowd of vultures that have formed a Berlin wall around the crates, and yet another summer of hell has officially begun.
From the outside all you can see are the green coloured crates flying passed your ears with a swooping sound, combined with the screams and shrieks coming from the orgy that once was the fruit counter, but which will from now on be known as “The Battle at the Fruit Crates”.
When the customers finally realise that there is no perfect strawberry punnet to be found, they steal shamelessly from other punnets to compensate for the lack of perfection in the one they decide to buy, so that when they reach the till to pay for their prey, the punnet looks like it’s going to explode into a bloody summer sweet berry bomb, and they look at you with Bambie-eyes like they had nothing to do with it. And as you’re trying to get them all through the till, pretending not to notice the death threats passing through the crowd, a crescendo of questions fly through the air back where the orgy is still going strong, “how much are the strawberries? Are they Norwegian? Don’t you have any fresher berries out back? Where are the strawberries? Do you have strawberries? Can I mash the berries and force my husband to lick them off my feet? Strawberries! Strawberries! More strawberries!!!”
Only when the last punnet is sold and has left the building there is silence to be found in the shop. The sore sobs coming from the fruit manager huddled together in a corner is the only sound that cuts through the silence and joins the bangs of elderly women slipping on the strewn around and mashed strawberries on the floor, forming a deadly trap, and sends their victims sliding into a pile of apples. The staff get together for a pep talk and a quick psychiatric check up, and there is always that one guy that breaks down and has to be forcefully removed from the backroom on a jack lift by friendly men in white coats, to get a cuddle and a encouraging free piece of candy.
The cold sweat is taken over by normal sweat, outside on the roof pigeons gather peacefully, and in the parking lot children play with a dead cadaver of some road killed animal. All seems so peaceful, but the memories won’t let go, and the threat of a new day and new strawberry sales makes watching Jaws as a kid a laughing matter. Summers will keep coming, and somewhere out there strawberries are growing, growing, growing to the rhythm of evil laughing back at you.
If you ever plan on going on a holiday to Norway, make sure you bring a weapon of your choice.
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