Neighborhood vignette #2: The one with the baking soda

My mall -- the one nearest to where I live -- has no baking soda in its grocery department. I'm not kidding. And, surprise, surprise, neither did the Rustan's Express Lane in my neighborhood. Did they not know that baking soda is one of the most useful substances in, like, the world? At least the neighborhood sari-sari -slash- mini-grocery knew that. Shame on you corporate-owned establishments!

The woman at the sari-sari store was curious, though, when I asked for baking soda.

What are you using that for?

I assumed she was asking what I was baking, because it was, well, baking soda, after all. Uh, cookies.

Isn't that used for whitening stuff?

Well, yeah, it is. Like teeth. But it's also used for baking. I smiled at her and left.

That was weeks ago, and I ran out of BS again today. (I don't bake that much. Most of it went to trying to get wine stains out of Oberon's shirt. Moral lesson: If you're a twenty-something urbanite, you must always have a frigging corkscrew in your kitchen.) Katharina, who just quit her job and was free as a bird, was doing errands and I asked her to pick up a box on her way back.

The woman at the store asked what we wanted with the baking soda.

Is this woman the head of the Commission on Baking Soda Control or something? Funny, she also asked me that when I bought one before.

She says she uses it for bathing. Makes her skin smooth or something.

I realized the not-so-elderly woman behind the counter wondered if people had other strange uses for the stuff. She was hoping she wasn't that weird for using it in the bathroom. Or maybe she just wanted to pass on some sound skin care tips. No matter what her reason was, if it meant that her store would always have BS stocked, I'm happy.

By the way, they also had vanilla, when Rustan's Express Lane didn't. I wonder if she puts it in her hair.