My Very Expensive Buns

Why do hamburgers fly South for the Winter? So they won’t freeze their buns off!!! Years ago, that joke used to be funny; now it’s simply untrue. When I moved to Alabama six years ago, all of the locals told me: “It never snows here.” Apparently, Mother Nature was waiting for my arrival. It has snowed at least twice a year since I moved to Alabama–from a light dusting to the Polar Vortex Snow-pocalypse.

Whenever a storm is on its way, panic sets in at the local grocery stores. As one person quipped on social media: “Milk, eggs, and bread are gone from all of the area grocery stores. Must be some kind of French toast festival going on.”

The other night, I rushed into the grocery to stock up before the latest round of snow kept us housebound once more. It was so cold, the devil wore three layers of Prada. As for the grocery store shelves, they were so empty, I ended up having to buy the world’s most expensive hamburger buns.

It made me think of those epic fails I’ve seen on the internet–hamburger buns in hot dog bun wrappers and vice versa. From the number of photos online, it seems this happens all the time. I can just imagine the conversations at the bun-packing factory: “Really? You just had to do one thing–put the hamburger buns in the package marked hamburger buns. How hard can it be?”

I guess the moral of this story (and this entire winter season) is that both humans and Mother Nature make mistakes, whether it’s mislabeled buns or two snowstorms in the South in less than two weeks. That said, I may scoff at the bun-stuffers, but I’d never attempt to point out the error of Mother Nature’s ways. It reminds me of a joke:

A husband and wife were out playing golf. They tee off and one drive goes to the right, the other goes to the left. The couple separates, and the wife finds her ball in a patch of buttercups. She grabs a club and takes a mighty swing at the ball, completely destroying the buttercups. Suddenly, a formidable woman appears out of thin air and says, “I’m Mother Nature, and I don’t like the way you treated my buttercups. From now on, you’ll never want butter again.” Then, Mother Nature disappears just as quickly as she appeared.

Shaken, the wife calls out to her husband “Honey, where’s your ball?” “It’s over here in the pussy willows,” he replies. The wife screams back: “DON’T HIT THE BALL!!!! DON’T HIT THE BALL!!!!”