I’m a potato chip wrapped in a beautiful bag. The guys who designed my bag chose bright colors to catch your eye. You’ll see one or two of me on the front. I come in lots of flavors: salted, unsalted, rippled, honey barbecue, and flamin’ buffalo just to name a few.

But I’m an honest potato chip so I thought I’d come out with some truths about us chippies you should know before you throw us into your shopping cart.

When you buy a bag of me and my siblings, what you see is not what you get. You open this big bag and a puff of air pops you into the face. You look into the dark abyss and you think, where are you, my chippies? Oh, we’re in here. Reach in. Nope, that’s not far down enough. Farther, farther. There we are!

You pull one of my chippies out and you find him pleasantly curved at the top and bottom and so nicely tucked into your hand. You take a bite. You hear the crunch. Delish!

As the old TV commercial said, “You can’t eat just one.” So back in the bag goes your hand. Three, four chips later, we get smaller and smaller. When your hand finds the bottom, we’re a bunch of crumbs and each time you jam a mess of us into your mouth, we leave an oil slick of salt upon the tips of your fingers.

I bet you didn’t know this about me. Research claims that companies that make us have put five fewer chips in each bag, saving them more than $50 million! And it’s not just us that you pay more for and get less.

“Hey, Ring Ding, how you doing?” I shouted to the next aisle.

“Hey, Chipman. It’s a tough go nowadays. I remember when my grandfather would tell me stories about his days inside the lunch bags of the school kids. Back then we were the kings of all the snacks. We were as big as the moon and with every bite, we delivered a mouthful of sweet cream. Those were the good old days, Chipman. Now, you take two small bites and you’re done with us. And I’ll bet you 10 bags of your cheese curl cousins, that somewhere on this shelf, at least one of us is sitting here with not one dab of cream inside.

“I know what you mean, RD,” I said. “I used to sell for a buck forty-nine and just the other day a new batch came in at over five smackeroos. Are they kidding me? Yesterday, a lady picked up one of our bags. She almost squeezed us to death with her fingers. She says, ‘$5.49 for this? No way.’”

“So, she tosses our bag back to the shelf and misses. She moves on with her shopping cart. We’re lying on the floor and this little kid comes along and does a double leg jump right on top of us! Our bag was crushed and busted. Little chippies are all over the floor and the next thing I know, my brothers and sisters were swept up and dumped in the garbage.”

“Hey Chipman!” It’s the Fruit Pie Guy right next to the Ring Dinger. “I come one in a box that looks like a little boat. I’m blueberry. There’s apple and chocolate, too. I heard you talking. We’re in the same boat, pardon the pun. Who wants to pay two George Washingtons for me? I’m six inches long and three inches wide and let me tell you, it’s not like those old days. Now you take a bite of me and you get no real fruit. I’m all goo with no berry blue. You might crack a tooth on my crust, too; we’re that dry and hard on top. Chew me up and it feels like you’re getting a mouthful of sawdust.”

“I’m a victim of shrinkflation, too.” shouted the chocolate kiss. “They still call me a kiss, but I’m barely a peck on the lips. You say you cost too much? Try $6.99 for a small bag of us. We used to be so proud inside our foil, like a chocolate gem. Now you pull our string and we’re barely bigger than an M & M.”

“Hey snackeroos, it’s T-bone steak over here in the meat department. You wanna talk about costing an arm and a leg or in my case, the short loin of a cow? I’m sitting her inside my wrapper at $18.50 and that ain’t too nifty. And you know what? I’m all bone and no bite.”

“You think that’s bad,” said a little jar of sun-dried tomatoes. “They jacked me up to $7.59 and now I sit on the shelf and watch everybody pass me by for months.”

“I’m hearin’ ya Red Boy,” yelled a small bottle of thyme from the spice rack. “You drop a basil, a nutmeg and me in the cart and we’re talkin’ an easy 14 bucks. You would need to win the Powerball to buy our whole rack,” laughed the salt and pepper.

“Yeah, but at least you ain’t gotta worry about what we all gotta worry about,” shouted Chip Man.

“What’s that?” asked the spice rack in harmony.

Suddenly, the shelves in the entire store began to shake. From the dairy aisle to the bread aisle across to the packages of chicken and the pork, and on over to the produce.

In a rising roar that nearly knocked down the “Fresh Daily” sign at the front of the store, a terrible scream could be heard from as far away as the parking lot.

“THE EXPIRATION DATE!!”

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com