Full or Half Breasted

Our local market in town has a small meat counter which I've been eyeing for the last few weeks. Not only does the meat look fresh but it is priced well too. I walked in there the other morning prepared to purchase my beef and chicken. What I didn't expect was the meat counter windows to be empty.

I realized I better just ask the question burning in my mind and walked up to the meat counter. The handsome Hispanic man behind the counter saw me and I kindly asked him when the meat would be out. He clearly didn't understand me and I figured I better use more precise words and said, "When will the hamburger and chicken be out?"

"Oh!" he said, "I can get that for you right now. How much do you want?"

He set to work on my beef order and when he was done he asked if I needed anything else. I told him I would like 9 chicken breasts. His eyes grew huge and he said, "That's a lot of chicken. Are you sure you want 9? A breast is 1-2 lbs. of meat." He looked at me rather skeptically and waited for my answer.

First off, I wasn't expecting him to throw questions at me and so I stood there most likely with a blank look on my face as I tried to calculate how much chicken I needed in pounds. Second off, I couldn't wrap my mind around 9 pieces of chicken weighing that much. All the chicken breasts I ate growing up never seemed that huge to me to where 9 pieces would weigh an exorbitant amount of pounds.

I decided to play it safe and asked him to get me 4 chicken breasts. He slowly turned around and walked to the back of the shop as though he were giving me time to change my mind. All I could think about was, "What is going on?"

As he came back up front he plopped a huge bag of chicken onto the scale and then it was time for my eyes to get big. At that moment I felt like I'd been lied to my whole life. What I had always known as a chicken breast was in fact only HALF of a chicken breast. Pahhhhh! Don't know how I let that one skip by me.

Glancing back at the huge bag of chicken in front of me I knew there was no way our little freezer in the trailer would be able to hold that much chicken. I gave him the go ahead and had him remove 1 of the chicken breasts. It still seemed as though the bag of chicken was overflowing but I figured I could make it work.

As I walked away from the counter I thanked the meat man and heard him laugh to himself saying quietly, "That's a lot of chicken..."

So, I may not have walked out of there with 9 chicken breasts as originally planned, but I definitely got my 9 chicken breasts worth......in halves. LOL!