When I was a child my mother, sisters and I would take a weekly trip to our grandparents' house for Sunday dinner and invariably at some point the adults would begin a discussion on the affairs of the country. Presidents, inflation, foreign affairs, Elvis, race relations and among every possible scenario the most telling to my grandmother was food prices. She was always concerned about groceries and the one item she mentioned most was the price of tomatoes. To her their cost was an indication as to the state of the world. If tomatoes were high then the country was in trouble. The more affordable they were then she was more optimistic and this theory governed her overall outlook.
This lends the possibility that we all hold something we deem important enough that gauges how we view our world. Isn't there something we look to that determines our opinions, optimism or pessimism about the world around us; something equally telling to us as the price of tomatoes was to my grandmother? This begs the question, "what's your tomato?"
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