Big Red
The cute, short-haired girl behind the table at my local farmer’s market shot me a quizzical look as I perused her samples. She pointed at my shirt and sheepishly asked, “What does that mean? Lie-ko-what?”
Lycopersicum esculentum.
“Huh? What’s that?”
It’s the, um, scientific name for the tomato.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s cool. Where did you… where’d you get that shirt?”
I work at the Field Museum, and I guess we kind of get these for free, every now and then.
“Wow, that’s pretty cool.”
This would be a neat story, perhaps an illustrative moment that marked the tentative, awkward start of a lasting friendship, that she was charmed by my quirky nerdiness and I was taken by her inquisitiveness, except that as I paid for my goods and walked away I couldn’t help but be a bit unsure as to how somebody who worked for an organic tomato farm and salsa cannery could be in the slightest way confused by my shirt.
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