Customers at an area Kroger held their breath Tuesday morning as 34-year-old Mark Teller examined a cantaloupe with the grim, unwavering focus of an explosives expert attempting to defuse a hostile device.
Shoppers in the produce section reportedly cleared a ten-foot perimeter around Teller as he isolated the melon from the rest of the display, bracing his stance before executing a delicate, multi-sensory diagnostic sweep. Sweating slightly under the fluorescent lights, Teller placed his thumb against the blossom end of the fruit, applying exactly four pounds of pressure to test for structural yield.
After confirming a slight give in the rind, the civilian hoisted the four-pound orb to his ear and tapped the exterior netting three times with a stiffened index finger, listening intently for the resonant acoustic signature of peak ripeness.
He rotated it by the stem with the kind of reverence usually reserved for unstable chemical compounds.
At approximately 10:47 a.m., Teller raised the specimen to his face, closing his eyes to isolate his olfactory senses as he inhaled deeply from the melon’s equator. Finding the musky gas emissions satisfactory, he nodded once to himself and lowered the fruit into the child seat of his shopping cart, treating the metal grate like a blast-proof containment vessel.
The agonizing tension in the produce aisle finally broke seconds later, when Teller casually tossed a plastic clamshell of bruised spinach into the cart from six feet away and wandered toward the dairy aisle.