Guard him and make sure he doesn't leave

One of my favorite things is those surreal conversations one has from time to time. The quintessential example is from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," in the scene where the king wants his son, who wishes to escape marriage, guarded in his room by two guards. The king wants the guards to stay in the room and guard the son to prevent his escape. He says this in as many clear ways as he can, to no avail. The guards continually misunderstand him, and when the king ultimately turns to leave, they attempt to follow him out. If you have never watched this scene, you really should, because once you've seen it, life will remind you of it repeatedly.

I bring this up because I had a mildly surreal encounter at the vegetable stand on Sunday, and I thought I'd try to transcribe it here, as best I can remember it. This stand is between my house and the woods where I hike with the dogs on Sunday mornings, and sometimes on my way back after the hike, I like to stop there and get some decent tomatoes. I can't grow tomatoes myself (that's a whole different story), and I don't think grocery store tomatoes are worth the space they take up, but this stand manages to sell me some tasty ones from time to time.

So last Sunday I stopped. I picked up eight tomatoes, four ears of white corn, and two apples. I put each set in their own white plastic bag and brought them to the register, which is propped on a wooden counter under a roof. A roof, I might mention, that I crack my head on every single bleedin' time I visit this vegetable stand. The man tending the stand rose and said a friendly hullo, and then the conversation went something like this:

"Hullo."
"Hi, how are you today?"
"Fine, just fine. Lovely day. Will this be all?"
"Oh, yes, thank you. I've got four ears of corn, I think eight tomatoes, and a couple apples. I don't know which stuff you do by weight and which you count, but I think it's probably eight tomatoes."

As I said this, he took the tomatoes and the apples and put them on a scale, thus wordlessly letting me know he weighs tomatoes and apples rather than counting them. Then he looked over at my bag of corn and scowled.

"You sure that's eight?"
"Yes, eight tomat... oh, the corn? Four corn. I have four ears of corn."
Then him, chuckling, "I didn't think that was eight corn. You said eight, I thought you were crazy."
"Oh, no, I said four corn, eight tomat..."
"Cause you said eight corn and I can tell that ain't eight."
"Well, yes... that's four."
"Cause you said eight."
"Well, yeah, that was a mistake. I meant four."
"Uh-huh."

At which point he was satisfied, and we concluded our sale.