Innocence of Children

A normal method of shopping here would take a person to the mercado. Shopping in a market can be fun and yet confusing. When you walk into a market, you see stand after stand with the same products. Todos tienen platanos, todos tienen mandarinas, y todos tienen bolsas negras para llevar tus cosas. So what makes you buy from one and not the other? Relationships. You buy one week, you buy the next week and then you are a regular customer - you get the better deals, the suggestions, and the extra treats. As you go from stand to stand, you select products and pay for them on the spot. Each stand has it's own marketing technique (compratelo!), each has it's own scale and it's own money box.

What happens when a person who has shopped all their lives in a mercado goes into a supermarket? Often they are overwhelmed by all the products, are confused by the aisles, have never used a shopping cart in their lives, and usually do not have any idea where to begin. I have had someone ask how to open the display refrigerators to take out a bottle of coke. I have had people hesitate to select and bag the produce. I have watched people fearfully take a cart because they have never pushed one before.

What happens when a child enters a supermarket for the first time when all he knows is the mercado? He tells his mother to "take some of everything in the store - we don't have to pay for it; it's free!" Later, he learned that they collect money for everything at the checkout stand.

How cute! Que lindo!