The Blue Box and the Yellow Box

Tuesday, eight in the morning. Yara came into my shop on Vine Street with a cereal box under her arm and put it on the counter, direct, no hello.

“Soren, this is the wrong cereal,” she said.

The box said Honey Crunch Loops — the blue one, the expensive one. I opened the top and pulled out the bag inside, and the bag was our own brand, the yellow one, a dollar forty cheaper.

“Somebody's put the cheap bag in the expensive box,” she said. “I'd like my money back.”

Fair claim. I don't argue with anyone about a dollar forty before nine. But I took a yellow box off the shelf first, and I turned both of them around.

“Look at that.” I held the two lists next to each other. “Same words. Same order. Same factory, same town.”

Yara reads everything. She read them twice.

“So it's the same cereal,” she said.

“Made in the same place, anyway.”

“I always thought the blue one was better.”

“So did I,” I said, and I gave her the dollar forty.

She buys the yellow box now. So do I.