Upon entering Stephanie’s car the other day, I found a miniature can of Pringles in the cup holder. It had been awhile (a decade?) since my last indulgence of this potato powder snack, so I crunched down a few. We came to a stoplight up the street, waiting alongside a sporty-looking dude on a bike. My window was down, and when the guy looked over and eyed the chips, he asked me if he could have one. I handed over the container and he picked one from the stack. “Tastes like Pringles!” he said, confirming the signature flavor he probably hadn’t experienced in eons, either.
Back in the nineties, before artisanal small batch grub was the norm, Pringles had a more solid place in my snack food rotation. One afternoon a group of us were munching from a can of Sour Cream and Onion in the lobby of the college fine art building. It was yearbook photo day and a small booth had been constructed in case anyone opted to have their image taken for posterity. My friends and I hung back, not planning to participate, but then Aimee had a rather “art student”-like idea. She dared me to take the can of Pringles up to the photographer and tell a story about how my nickname was Pringle and it would mean a lot to have a picture of myself with the cylinder of chips in the frame. He agreed and I displayed the can next to my face as if I was Vanna White. In addition to that was my once-blue hair, now faded into an ugly green the color chlorine sometimes turns the tresses of rampant swimmers. Classy! After the session, I confessed to the guy my story wasn’t true. “I know, I heard your friend conjure it up,” he said. But the photo did make it into the yearbook.
