I should know better than to taunt Marion. She really doesn’t deserve it, but sometimes I get carried away and push her buttons a little too far.

It all started when we were talking about the movie Les Misérables. I was trying to make a point about a particular scene in the movie when the priest gives the silver candlesticks to Jean Valjean.

“If you say so,” she said.

I kept trying and Marion was having none of it. I wanted to make my point. She rolled her eyes. I pleaded my case. She yawned. I pushed harder and she finally held her face in her hands and begged for mercy.

Here’s where I went too far.

“You’re just culturally aloof. Les Misérables is a great story.”

The discussion ended right there. Believe it or not, no frying pans were thrown. She gave me the look. I recognized that we were at an impasse, and we moved on to the rest of the evening.

But her mind was at work.

The next morning we’re sitting on the back porch, coffee in hand, watching the deer graze their way across her backyard. We had no plans for the day, when she made an announcement.

“You say I’m not cultured. I’m gonna take you somewhere this morning for a little taste of my kind of culture.”

I was a little uneasy. I didn’t want to be skinned and quartered like a deer.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “This will be a real cultural experience for you.”

No telling what she has in mind  when she’s had time to stew on something like this.

“I’m not telling you where we’re going, but I’ll give you a few hints.”

I love a good mystery.

So she lays out the plan. The location is 43 miles away, mostly north of here. The experience will be pleasing to your palate. And, lastly, you’ll want to trade those shorts for some jeans and grab a sweatshirt.

It’s the wrong time of year for hockey. Besides, I can’t see her thinking of hockey as a cultural experience. I’m racking my brain and I’m coming up with goose eggs.

We head north up I-85. The whole time I’m thinking about places on the north side of Atlanta, but I can’t make sense of the sweatshirt. It’s August and hotter than a tin roof out there.

Then, when we take the ramp to I-285 toward the east side of town, that really throws me a curve. We don’t go around the east side. Not ever. I’m thinking, “What’s on the east side? What’s on the east side?” And then like a bolt of lightning, it hits me.

“We’re going to the Dekalb Farmer’s Market, aren’t we?”

She grins with her entire face. She’s been telling me about this market ever since I’ve known her. She used to work off Clairmont and would often make time to go by the market on her way home. She would take her kids to the market on a Saturday like most of us would take our kids to the park.

“The world comes to the Dekalb Farmer’s Market. You’re gonna love it,” she says.

“If you say so,” I retorted.

I was trying to poke her back for her lack of enthusiasm for Les Misérables, but inside I was honestly pumped to see what this place was all about.

We pulled into a parking lot the size of two football fields. The crowd was busy but not overwhelming at 9:30 in the morning. In front of us stood an enormous warehouse of a building, completely different from the open covered bays of the Georgia Farmer’s Market in Forest Park.

From the far end of the parking lot I could smell the fish like we were down by the charter boats on the Gulf Coast. I grabbed a buggy from the rack, and we headed toward the doors. Not long after being inside, the sweatshirt went on.

My word. An enormous space. 30 foot ceilings. Rows and rows of steel warehouse shelves packed with food products from all over the world. Signs that told of each product’s origin. Florida, Georgia, and California weren’t that surprising. But Argentina, Spain, Japan, Italy, and Pakistan were new to my sheltered life’s experience.

I grew up shopping at Marvin Daniel’s Grocery. I understand the Kroger’s of the world. And I’ve finally gotten comfortable with the staggering size of places like Sam’s Club. But this market is more than any of those in spades, plus it’s all about foods from 180 countries around the globe.

To my surprise, JIF and Peter Pan are not the only two peanut butters on the planet. The vegetable tables are five times the size of my kitchen table. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and green beans are piled up like Egyptian pyramids. Odd looking sweet potatoes. Fruit types that I don’t recognize in shape or name from the four corners of the earth. Blueberry cinnamon flax. Stone ground wheat crackers. Hibiscus tea. Lentil chips. Flatbread chips. Organic red hot chips. Jar after jar of curry, mango pulp, and Peking duck sauce.

And my favorite: Freeze dried super purple sea moss. They have it in several outstanding colors and textures to suit your personal palate.

The bakery is like manna from heaven. Freshly baked breads of every description made on the premises every day. The meat market is massive. The fish market has more whole fish than the Georgia Aquarium. The Dairy market is the size of my house. And the glass cabinets toward the exit are chocked full of enough pies and cakes to feed an army.

You get it. This place is huge.

By the time we spent two hours pushing our buggy around, I was totally immersed in the culture of the market. Seems to me I heard at least five different languages in the crowd. The salespeople wear name tags that tell you what country they’re from and whether or not they speak English. And the buggy traffic is brutal, akin to my experience riding a bus on the narrow mountain roads of Guatemala. The fastest buggy has the right of way.

We rolled into the checkout bullpen. A young man from Ethiopia scanned our purchases. In broken English, he held one item in his hand and asked Marion, “What is this?”

“That’s a snake squash from Armenia.” Marion told him.

I was as surprised as he was. It looked like a snake. Green and yellow stripes the length of its body. Slightly curved. I could almost imagine it slithering across the floor.

I was a little bit baffled. I mean, I bought things like salted cashews, chocolate covered raisins, and pita bread. I didn’t want to appear to be culturally stupid. I was sure she knew what she was doing. But I had to ask.

“What are you gonna do with that?”

I was expecting her to tell me about some exotic recipe. Maybe give me a lesson in the refined culture of the culinary arts.

“Pshaw!” she said. “I’m giving it to Shannen. She likes to try weird stuff.”

Somehow, I felt redeemed.

Could be that neither one of us is all that cultured.