As I was cruising the grocery store the other day, my cellphone rang. The photo on the screen indicated that the caller was my wife, but I answered it anyway.

“Don’t forget to pick up potato chips,” she reminded me.

“What kind?” I asked.

“What do you mean, ‘what kind?’ ”

“Do you want Honey Bar-B-Que, Sweet Onion, Mesquite Smoked ...?”

“Just get plain old potato chips.”

It took me 20 minutes, but I eventually found a bag of plain old potato chips. It was hidden behind the Garden Tomato & Basil-flavored chips, which were next to the Cheddar & Sour Cream-flavored chips.

Like just about everything else in life, buying potato chips used to be a lot less complicated. There were chips, and there were chips with ridges. If you didn’t want either of those, there were pretzels.

Dayton-based Mike-sells, which bills itself as “the oldest potato chip manufacturer in the United States,” has 22 varieties, including two new flavors. One of those is Reduced Fat Tuscan Spice, which it claims “offers a unique flavor with a splash of olive oil, a burst of sun-dried tomato and a hint of rosemary and herbs.”

We never used to care if our chips had a splash, a burst or a hint of anything. All we hoped was that they wouldn’t break in half when we stuck them into our French onion dip.

But then plain old potato chips led to barbecue-flavored potato chips, which led to cheddar-flavored potato chips, which led us to where we are today: BLT-flavored potato chips. Which, I personally discovered, do not taste anything like bacon, lettuce, tomato or any other substance the average human taste bud would recognize.

While it’s easy to point to the presence of Dill Pickle-flavored chips in this country as further evidence of the decline in American standards, the chip explosion has been global. You can get Fries & Gravy-flavored chips in Canada. Chili & Knuckle of Pork-flavored chips in Poland. Cucumber & Goats-flavored chips in Belgium. Octopus-flavored chips in Japan.

Great Britain, in keeping with its tradition of producing food that most people wouldn’t consider edible, has Irish Stew-flavored chips and Yorkshire Pudding-flavored chips. Not to mention Builder’s Breakfast-flavored chips, which combine splashes of bread, pudding and eggs, bursts of beans and potatoes and hints of “various breakfast meats.”

Under its assorted international names, Lay’s produces a reported 204 different flavors of chips, including Lamb & Mint, Red Caviar and Numb & Spicy Hot Pot.

In a world that demands more choices in everything from wines to television channels, potato chip varieties are reproducing like gerbils. Although, as far as I know, there isn’t actually a gerbil-flavored potato chip.

It’s probably only a matter of time.

Contact this columnist at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com