The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

Over the weekend I acquired a package of "Rachel's Potato Chips," where the apostrophe is made with a picture of a heart. The front of the package also includes three taglines: "Made from the heart," "gourmet traditional" (whatever that is…), and "America's Finest Gourmet." It's all incredibly cheesy and pointless, but nothing to really put me off from eating the chips.

It was the writing on the back that did me in:

Rachel's Story

When I was a little girl, I would spend many weekends on my grandparent's[sic] farm. The wonderful smell in my G[sic]randmother's kitchen come[sic] back to me as real today as they were then.¹ I remember she would say, "You should always use the best ingredients you can find. Don't take any shortcuts, because there is only one way to do something right!"²

At the end of the day she would get a twinkle in her eye and say, "I suppose you're too tired to make a batch of my famous potato chips."³ I would beg her to let me do the seasoning and she would tell me that I would have to wait until I was older [sic]that it had to be done just right.⁴ She smiled and told me of a promise that she had made a long time ago to her G[sic]randmother, a solemn promise to make everything as best[sic] as it could be made.⁵ A promise she made from the heart.⁶

I remember those days in that wonderful kitchen and I remember Grandmother's lessons.⁷ They are what guide us at Rachel's.⁸ When you open this bag you will taste a chip made with the best and healthiest ingredients, cooked with care, one batch at a time. As Grandmother did, we make a promise that each chip we prepare is -[sic] made from the heart.⁹

1. Sentences like these make my brain hurt.
2. Apparently, however, that advice does not apply to copyediting. (Though they at least managed to spell "potato" correctly...)
3. The chips were already famous? Who was this woman???
4. Grandma sounds cruel. She messes with her daughter to make her THINK she was going to get to make the potato chips, and then doesn't let her.
5. This poor kid! Her grandmother won't let her help her make the chips because of a promise she'd made to her grandmother??? At some point, YEARS ago, before her own children were even a glimmer in her eye, she'd apparently swore a solemn oath to her own heartless grandmother never to let anyone mess with the potato chips, not even if it was her own flesh and blood who could someday pass along the family tradition for quality potato chips, since clearly they would only RUIN them. What a horrible promise! And a particularly ironic one, seeing how the granddaughter herself grew up to be a professional potato chip maker with apparently no guidance whatsoever…
6. Her ice cold, stony heart.
7. Including, "Never trust your children with anything as important as making potato chips. They'll just do it WRONG."
8. By the way, "Rachel's" is really KLN Enterprises of Perham, MN.
9. Ripped from the body still beating, sliced into paper-thin strips, and then deep-fried in only the finest oils available.

Anyway, this packaging leaves me with grave concerns about eating the chips therein...