A Curious Case of One Bell Pepper

There was also a little boy

Many years ago, I observed an interesting interaction that I’m still curious about.

I went back to my home country to deal with some legal issues and used my free time to catch up with friends and acquaintances that I haven’t seen for years.

One of them was a very smart woman, a freelance translator, and a former university professor. I will call her Maggie.

She chose to freelance to have free time and avoid the politics of the academic world. She married and had an only child into her forties, and her flexible schedule allowed her to dedicate a lot of time to their son’s upbringing.

Maggie had many interests, enjoyed martial arts, read a lot, and had an easy relationship with her husband.

When we met, her son was about six. I didn’t know much about her parenting style or their circumstances, and that led me to speculate about the interaction that caught my attention.

At that time, the economic situation in my home country was not very comfortable.

Few people could afford to buy imported produce out of season. Fruits and vegetables delivered from faraway countries cost an arm and a leg. They were often sold through a variety of under-the-radar tiny fruit stands that traded in cash only.

When I arranged to visit Maggie and her husband, we started with a stroll where we could chat, and her son could have his daily time outside.

We stopped by the fruit stand, so that Maggie could buy a red bell pepper.

She made her selection, inspecting the peppers very carefully and with much deliberation.

She only bought one.

It was huge, red and shiny. It looked very prosperous and appetizing.

It was beautiful.

When we got back to their place, we continued the conversation while she started preparing dinner as we were expecting her husband’s return.

As she started to cut up the pepper for the dinner salad, her son darted in to steal a few slices. She let him have a couple, and then said: “Please, no more, we need the rest for our salad.” His face showed disappointment, but he obediently left the kitchen and did not try to pilfer anymore.

Then, I wondered about the real reason she only bought one pepper.

I could think of three possible explanations.

One, that they couldn’t afford the luxury of fresh vegetables out of season every day and that this was an indulgence on account of receiving a guest (me). Perhaps freelancing was not working out well. It was an uncomfortable thought — I knew very well how the hospitality of my people could go into extremes. I certainly didn’t want to be the reason for an unnecessary extravagance.

The second explanation was that this was a smart shopping strategy. If you only buy one pepper, the fruit stand seller cannot very well refuse you to select the best one.

In our country, the customer was rarely right in the past. Shop assistants and fruit stand owners could be rude. It would be preposterous for a customer to be demanding or to be picky about the purchase.

However, at this time of the emerging market economy, the psychology of the seller-buyer relationship was undergoing a change.

It was becoming more important to be nice to people who had enough money to buy from you. And if a mom with a child stops to buy just one pepper — poor thing, think of it — just one! — then the least we can do is to let her choose one.

My third explanation is pedagogical. Perhaps it was just a smart strategy to make her son desire this pepper, this forbidden fruit so much that he would sneak into the kitchen to snatch a piece.

Perhaps this artificially created scarcity — we only have one pepper for dinner today — created an impossible temptation for a six-year-old.

Was this just a strategy to nurture the preference for healthy foods in a child?

I still don’t know the answer.

Of course, I couldn’t ask.

I wonder though.

I am rather inclined to go with the third explanation. She used to be an economics professor, after all.