Over the past few years, I’ve paid only sporadic attention to the prices of stuff I regularly buy. Yes, when COVID caused prices to soar, I switched from Quaker Oats to no-name oat bran found in a bin at Fairway, and departed from cans of V-8 by moving on to cans of tomato juice.
But I never noticed the price of eggs because…eggs are eggs and are a permanent part of my life. I love eggs. (Do I have to offer a declaration here that the eggs I’m referring to are hen eggs, not human ones? OK, that was my declaration.)
But yesterday I did notice the price of eggs.
For years, I’ve been reading agony columns on Twitter (TAFKAT) about the prices of gasoline, ground beef, eggs. (All Joe Biden’s fault.*) At some point I saw news items about some sort of corrupt finagling among big egg producers (none of whom was named Joe Biden*) who had collaborated in price-fixing, and a chicken virus knocking off egg-laying hens — factual info that emerged to explain why egg prices were so high, but as I said, I hadn’t really noticed because I really didn’t want to notice and didn’t need to notice.
A carton of a dozen eggs cost less than a Porsche and I was going to buy those eggs until I couldn’t afford to.
It was only a sidelong glance yesterday at egg prices, as I reached for ones I’d bought before and liked. A wide variation: had I noticed a dozen eggs selling for over 6 bucks? Maybe. Maybe they were “organic” eggs, but I specifically buy inorganic goods of all kinds.
My dozen eggs? $3.89, half the price of a loaf of challah, which is made with eggs. It’s a very large loaf, to be sure but still…
Oh and a gallon of gas is now around the price of those dozen eggs.
*If you need me to verify these mentions as sarcasm, you shouldn’t be hanging around me or my blog.