Dear Readers:
This week I made the mistake of hopping into Mommie’s purse when
she said she was “going to the coffee shop”. I thought this meant Dunkin’
Donuts, but alas and alack I was wrong; she went to Starbucks instead…and then
to Panera for lunch…followed by a trip to Pier One, because it was right next
door…lamented the loss of the Border’s Bookstore that once operated in the
valley she was overlooking…and then culminated my torturous afternoon by
stopping into Whole Foods to pick up “a few items”, the bill for which cost
more than my yearly food budget. It was then that I had a horrible thought:
Could my Mommie be tragically hip?
UrbanDictionary.com
defines tragically hip as “being so obsessed with keeping up with the latest
counter-culture fads and social pretensions that you lose your ability to think
for yourself and suppress any originality you may have ever had…” Uh-oh…she had
just visited not one but TWO trendy coffee shops in one afternoon, lamented the
loss of a third (because Border’s is nothing more than a coffee shop with
books), and paid a visit to the Mother Ship of pretentious hipsters everywhere
where she purchased items like imported Greek yogurt (made with real sugar, not
corn syrup!) and handcrafted fig jam (also made with real sugar, which should
do wonders for her glucose levels).
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| This cannot end well... |
As soon as we got home, but after I shook the hipster slime
off of me, I put together the following quiz and forced my Mommie to take it.
Thankfully, she failed; it turns out she was just having an off day. As for the
rest of you, dear readers, you may want to take this quiz to find out if you
are tragically hip…just in case you are and don’t know it!
ARE YOU TRAGICALLY HIP?
Choose the description that best describes you:
1.
You do the bulk of your grocery shopping at…?
a.
Whole Foods
b.
Stop and Shop, Shaw’s, Kroger, or some other
major, non-organic chain
c.
Price Rite, Walmart, or another discount grocery
store
d.
I generally don’t shop at the store; I grow my
own produce or buy it at the Farmer’s Market; can and preserve the surplus; own
a dairy cow and a few hens; and culture my own yogurt.
2.
When you go to the coffee shop you usually go
to…?
a.
A small, locally owned coffeehouse run by a
small businessperson who specializes in exotic blends
b.
Starbucks, Panera, or some other niche franchise
catering to organic tastes
c.
Dunkin’ Donuts
d.
I/my friends own the small coffeehouse and drink
my own/their product
3.
Do you recycle?
a.
Always…unless there isn’t a recycle bin around,
then I just throw it in the regular trash (like on the rare occasion I go to
Starbucks, those hypocrites!)
b.
I try my best, but I am not always sure of what
goes in which bin
c.
At home because my city/town has a
no-bin/no-barrel ordinance
d.
Recycling is practically a religion to me; I
also compost
4.
Look at the tags on the clothes you are now
wearing. Were your clothes…?
a.
Painstakingly handcrafted by a woman in a second
or third-world country and sold to a fair-trade middleman before making their
way into your hands
b.
Made in USA by union labor; Union YES!
c.
Made in China, Indonesia, India, or elsewhere in
Asia
d.
Made by you (or an immediate family member)
5.
What fabric is your favorite sweater made of?
a.
Bamboo, hemp, or some other non-traditional
plant-derived material
b.
Cotton, silk, wool, or maybe even a poly-blend
c.
Um, cloth?
d.
Wool, which I knit myself after spinning the
yarn from virgin wool that I purchased from the local shepherdess [Ed. Note:
Don’t laugh; I know a woman who does this!]
6.
What kind of car do you drive?
a.
A hybrid (any kind) or a Smart car
b.
An SUV or other vehicle that you wish got more
miles per gallon
c.
Something that, stylish or not, gets me to where
I need to go and was in my budget when I bought it
d.
I prefer public transportation; walking; and
riding my bike to motor vehicles, and only take my subcompact car when I need
to go on the highway
7.
Do you know what edamame is? [Ed. Note: My
spell-check doesn’t!]
a.
Yes, and I love it! I always buy it when I go
grocery shopping
b.
I have heard of it and/or eat it once in a while
c.
No.
d.
Yes; I grow/buy soybeans in the pod and what I
don’t process for milk, tofu, and other foods I eat in the whole form
8.
Your music collection:
a.
Went from vinyl to cassettes to CD’s to digital,
and back to vinyl because nothing is as pure as vinyl
b.
Is a collection of CD’s and digital…I upgraded
from cassettes years ago
c.
I have everything from pre-1988 vinyl to
digital; I change with the times but keep my old stuff
d.
I have wind-chimes; play the pan flute; and/or a
yard that attracts songbirds. I borrow CD’s from the library.
If you got:
All or mostly A’s: You are the very definition of tragically
hip. Let me paw-slap some sense and humility into you before Mother Nature does
it for me.
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| I will use the gentle paw this once! |
All or mostly B’s: You are the average, middle/upper-middle
class American who may or may not be striving for more (depending on how many
A’s you also checked). Keep on truckin’, you are fine just the way you are!
All or mostly C’s: You are frugal and very aware that much
of the fact that what it trending now is just that – trendy. Recognize that
some of the trends are not all bad, though; fair-trade coffee may cost more but
it guarantees that Juan Valdez is not the only coffee grower earning a living
wage off of the sale of his product. You could maybe stand to step it up a bit
and try the joy that is bamboo clothing (so soft, and it doesn’t rape the soil
like cotton!), eat some heart-healthy foods, and ditch that record of Donna Summer singing MacArthur Park. Unlike
John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s The White
Album it is never going to be worth more than you paid for it.
Ask Tazi! is ghostwritten by a human with Bachelors degrees in Communications and in Gender and Women's Studies. Tazi-Kat is not really a talking feline.
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