Forget the gold standard. We should be basing the U.S. dollar on the price of lemons. Have you seen how much lemons cost these days at the supermarket? They were $1.69 each last time I checked. EACH. A single lemon. Uno limon. One yellow fruit that you cut up to put in your ice tea. I'm going to sell my Google stock and invest in lemon futures.

I picked up a $1.69 lemon in the market and eyeballed it, seeing if there were any clues as to its incredible value. As lemons go, it was a handsome piece of fruit yellow, naturally , and heavy. Not heavy like gold, but heavy like a baseball. But they aren't selling lemons by weight, they're selling them individually, like silk hankies in a boutique. I put the lemon back, afraid that the store would charge me rent for just holding the thing. Nobody was buying these lemons. Like me, most were buying limes, which for reasons only the International Coalition of Produce Producers knows was a mere $1.50 PER POUND. Why limes are so undervalued on the fruit market compared to lemons, I haven't a clue. Perhaps they are easier to harvest. Maybe they have a better attitude than the haughty lemon.

I looked at all the other fruits in the produce section and their prices seemed to be behaving. Sure, a lot of produce seems overpriced. The hot-house tomatoes think they're special. They cost about $5 a pound. But you don't have to buy them. You can buy the weird little roma tomatoes for a lot less. Red bell peppers are always expensive, but you don't have to buy them, either.You can buy green bell peppers. But can't buy cheaper lemons. The only ones there are $1.69 each. Saudi Arabia prices.

Let me amend that. There are other lemons on sale in the supermarket. They can be found in the "you gotta be freakin' kidding me!" produce aisle; The scary "organic" section, where a banking officer in a suit helpfully sits ready to finance a loan for your purchase. Each vegetable or piece of fruit in the organic aisle has its own big, official decal stuck to it, like it's been formally approved by the Global Organic Food Certification Committee in Stockholm, Sweden. The only people you see buying organic produce are chauffeurs while their bosses wait in the limo. ("Alfred, be a good man and toddle in to get me an organic pomegranate. I think the trunk is full of cash.")

This is the truth: While I was standing on the other side of the velvet rope line gazing in awe at the organic produce, a supermarket clerk was pulling moldy organic lemons off the shelves and putting them in a rubbish box. The organic lemons cost more than $2 each. Nobody was buying them. I don't pretend to know anything about supermarket marketing, but what is the point of charging so much for a piece of fruit that it simply rots where it sits and has to be thrown away? Surely it would be better to cut your profit margin and just sell the organic fruit at a price a moderately rich herbicide-o-phobic yuppie would pay for it.

Someone reading this is going to call me and tell me that lemons cost so much because there was some kind of a lemon drought and all the lemons on sale in Hawai'i are being imported from a little citrus grove in southern Italy. Baloney. (Which, coincidentally, was on sale that day.) I've seen lemon trees. They aren't complicated. I could grow lemons in a Quonset hut in Alaska and still sell them in Hawai'i for less than $1.69 each. Or, better yet, maybe I'll just buy a bunch of limes, spray paint them yellow and sell them on the side of the road for a buck each. I'll be rich.