My five-dollar onion.

I was picking up groceries at my usual downscale supermarket in Brooklyn. They had like three types of onions -- yellow, at $.59 a pound, red at $.99, and Vidalia at $1.69 -- so I grabbed a cheap yellow one and tossed it in my cart. When I got home I checked the receipt and saw I’d been charged for a Vidalia onion, for a total cost of $4.62.

My first reaction was anger: anger that some idiot checker had misidentified my onion. But mostly I wondered, was there really such a thing as a five-dollar onion? I mean, in my neighborhood you can buy two dollar pants, a three dollar ceiling fan, a four dollar toaster oven. Every one of these products has like hundreds of different parts made of everything from titanium to rubber, assembled by long lines of foreign workers, and they spend months on boats maneuvering their way through cyclones and tornados and monsoons to eventually reach distant American stores.

On the other hand, it doesn't get much simpler than an onion. You buy yourself an onion seed, drop it in a hole in the ground, come back two months later and there it is. It's not like a chicken, which also doesn’t cost five dollars. You don't have to feed it, or pluck it, or build it a little cage. I feel like writing to Andy Rooney to ask what's up, maybe including a little P. S. about avocados.

You know, this is why I go to third-rate stores. You go to a nice New York store where everything’s expensive and you look petty when you complain about the price. "Ah, good choice!" the clerk says, ringing up your apple at $29 a pound. "A Garsoopal. Grown on the slopes of Mt. Etna and picked at four in the morning by clear-headed young virgins."

"No," you answer, "that's not quite right. See, I'm a normal person. I don't have a ‘lifestyle,’ $800,000 a year in disposal income, or Julia Child’s palate. This is a Granny Smith, and if it costs more than a dollar I'll be reasonably certain I'm being ripped off."

The clerk winces, and everyone behind you in line averts their eyes. "I'm sorry," he says, punching in the correct price of ninety-nine cents a pound. "I didn't know we carried those." And then he rings up your $80 carrot.

The worst part is, I can't even eat the onion, knowing what I paid for it. I have to save it for a special occasion. I'm thinking I'll dig a little basement under the house and build it its own little cellar, just to keep it safe. Put a lock on the door so a visitor doesn't accidentally slice it onto a burger or something. Maybe one day I'll have company over and I'll dust it off and casually bring it out.

"Oh my goodness," they'll exclaim, "what a lovely onion you have!"

"This?" I'll reply, lightly buffing it against my three-dollar shirt. "Oh, it's nothing."