The Jolly Green Giant is an Asshole

When I was really little, we shopped at ShopRite. Big, with lights that were always too bright, it scared me on a very basic, primal level. I was little, it was big. A simple dichotomy that had me as the loser in every encounter. But that wasn’t necessarily the problem. I did not have nightmares about going to supermarkets.  I haven’t yet either, and I think that’s very good, all things considered.
Everything was fine for the majority of the trips. We would have just eaten Burger King as part of our Saturday night ritual (church, dinner, food shopping) and I was sated, just another happy little blonde kid. I would sit in the children’s seat, kicking my feet against the back of the cart and watch my mom or my dad as we went up and down each aisle. I would point to things, get told no and we would continue on. If people came up to me, I shied away. This was the usual routine. It wasn’t my fault I had (and still have) an eyelash-eye color combo that should be featured in fashion magazines worldwide,  but people didn’t have to come up to me and tell me(1). I knew it, even at three, and my parents did, too. This process would repeat itself until we got to the canned vegetable aisle. Then, darkness settled over my little world and I would be carted through a couple hundred feet of hell.
The Jolly Green Giant scared the shit out of me as a child.  On every can on both sides of the aisle, his green face would be staring back at me. Thousands of miniature giants, all smiling, all staring, all ready to hop off the label and kill me. I may have had an overactive imagination as a child, but to me this was still within the bounds of the possible.  He was ready to kill me, I was sure of it. His vegetable business was really just a front. Everyone has to have a day job, right? His just happened to be that of a greengrocer.
So there he was, staring out at me, silently plotting, planning, getting ready to find me in my sleep and choke me out with leafy tendril arms. Turn me into a plant. I wasn’t sure what his MO would be, but it would be leafy and horrific. What made everything worse was that my parents bought his product. They willingly let that monster into our household. They let someone who wears a dress made of leaves into our house. Who has ever worn a dress made of leaves? Eve did and look and her, banished for being a sinner(2).
And my parents let him into our lovely home—our historic home that I grew up in. He hid in our retro cream and brown-trimmed cabinets. It was bad enough that I was paranoid with thoughts that every night someone was going to break into our house and I would not go anywhere in my house at night that was not well lit. Now, I had to deal with a serial killer hiding and waiting in my house, too. I tried to avoid the cabinets, but hunger called from time to time and there he was. Smiling out at me. Such a fake smile. I could see past it, even if no one else could. I knew what he wanted. How else would he ever get that big? He ate children. I knew. I didn’t get why my parents didn’t see this either. My vocabulary being limited, I wasn’t at liberty to sit down and discuss this with my parents, but I just hoped they would get it eventually.
I had heard stories—hell they told me stories—about monsters and giants and witches stealing children away. My grandmother always told me if I made too much noise, the gnomes that lived in the basement would come get me. I didn’t believe that one—I would bang on the floor in defiance, or try to shout to talk to them—but the stories built up and as a kid I had to believe in something. So I chose giants eating children instead. Those I couldn’t prove. I knew that gnomes didn’t live in the basement—I went down there every once and a while and could just tell they weren’t just hiding.
I would have nightmares about the Jolly Green Giant.  In them, he was there, holding an axe. If I were a normal child, he probably would’ve been gardening and I would’ve helped him and at the end of the day, after singing some songs and drinking ice-cold lemonade, I would’ve learned something good. That’s what would’ve happened on TV, at least. But no, instead, he had an axe and he was looking for me. I would run, my little legs pumping like I was running on a floor of balloons and I needed to pop every one. I would keep running, but it wouldn’t matter. The Jolly Green Giant would catch up to me and raise his axe high above his head. For some reason, we were the same size. He wasn’t a giant, just some crazed green man in a dress with an axe. He would swing. I would scream. I would wake up.  This dream happened more than once.   Then everything would be okay, until the next week.
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We eventually stopped going to ShopRite. This ended the Giant’s reign of terror over my dreamscape. He no longer haunted me. Eventually, too, the cans disappeared from our cabinets, dropped in favor of bags of frozen vegetables. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see frozen green beans.

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1)This is a hint to any fashion mavens and/or magazine publishers out there. Please take it.
2)To add to the whole leaf dress debate, why would he make a dress (I know some of you are probably screaming that it’s a tunic, but I don’t care, it was a dress to me) out of the same leaves that his hair was composed of? Was he trying to be the equivalent to the ascetic John in the Bible? When I learned about this Biblical figure, I hoped not. I didn’t want the Catholic Church to be behind this one. At that point, I still had faith.