Dear shopper,
I stood behind you in the queue yesterday at the grocery store. I couldn't help but notice that we'd both ended up with a large bag of brushed potatoes in our trollies. Do you remember? It was point of commonality, or so I thought.
A little old lady came and joined the line, and pointed at my bag of potatoes.
"They look interesting love, what are they?" she asked
"They are potahtoes" I replied, smiling as a look of recognition crept over her wrinkled features.
"Ahhh, I know someone that had potahtoes way back whe..."
"Excuse me" you said loudly, cutting the lady off mid-sentence and piquing the interest of nearby shoppers who pretended to go about their duties. "I'm afraid those do not exist. I have it on good authority from a well-known farmer that potahtoes are simply a figment of your imagination, or possibly some weird island fruit that has no place in this supermarket. What I have here are potaytoes, and they are such a wonderful food, you should really find out more about them. Here, have this pamphlet and be sure to spread the word on the false potahto, otherwise nobody will ever believe how nutritious and delicious potaytoes are"
The little lady nodded carefully, and cast a suspicious glance at the contents of my trolley.
I looked from your bag of potatoes to mine, and I couldn't see a difference at all. I leaned over, unsure, and squeezed a potato. It was certainly real enough to me.
Still puzzling, I offered to let the curious lady ahead of me in line, and she said the strangest thing as she tottered past.
"Doesn't make a difference to me love, you have nothing in your trolley except for that bag of potahtoes, and they don't really exist."
A few nearby shoppers nodded and grunted their agreement, and all of a sudden I felt so very alone.
You walked by me later in the carpark, and you leaned into my trolley, squeezed one of my potatoes, winked at me and walked off.
Why did you do that?
You are kicking the legs out from under people based on an argument over flipping semantics! You say potayto, I say potahto, why do you feel this pressing urge to redefine potahto in a way that changes it from a delicious starchy treat to a bowl of mixed nuts? Does it make you feel important or righteous when you spread such damaging propaganda for the sake of 'the greater good'? I sincerely hope so, because us poor old potahtoes would hate to think you are attempting to deny us our right to a gloriously smooth mash simply for shits and giggles.
What possible damage can a name do that can justify the pain you cause? Providing we are both referring to the same creamy tuber, who gives a flying fruitbat what it is called? There is no state of flux whereby the lonely little root vegetable undergoes a change in composition based upon the name it is given. A potato is still going to be a potato. Calling it Fred Astaire will not make it don a tiny little tuxedo and prance its way across the benchtop.
It is a potato, no more, no less.
Likewise, calling a tomato potayto or potahto will not change the fact that it is a small, red, seeded salad vegetable, it'll just make you look a bit thick and probably have an adverse effect on the quality of your chips. Some people may believe you for a while... but not after they catch a glimpse of the real thing.
With a tomato and a potato sitting side by side, only the supremely dense would ever think they were the same thing, whatever names you used to describe them. Sadly, there do seem to be quite a few people in this world who couldn't spot the difference between a juicy roma and a dusty old sebago if it jumped up and bit them on the nose.
Campaigning against the use of the name potahto by changing its definition is like playing with fire. What is to stop people deciding that, potayto or potahto, potatoes simply do not exist. The only way to stop this nonsense is to talk to the people, show them a potato and walk them through the process of turning it into a gourmet meal.
Life is hard enough with a trolley full of potatoes without having someone else with a trolley full of potatoes telling the world that yours don't exist, based on some inane literary technicality.
Sincerely,
The other lady with the bag of potatoes.
