Word on the streets growing up, if you accidentally swallowed a fruit seed of any type, it hold grow inside of your stomach, cut through your brain and pop right out your head like a red balloon. It would grow, grow taller then the Eiffel Tower, touch the skies and say the Hail Mary’s to any plane going by and birds making their nests. I wonder if there were any fireworks or wind blowing with amusement once they heard the first leaf fall.

I drunk the lemonade, not the kool-aid but lemonade for a while, sipped from the champagne glass as I vividly recall giving in to the tune with zest; yes, I did. Bought it cheap!

It was one furious nightmare that rented a space on my brain, free of charge; it made bed and wouldn’t let go. I dread its inner existence. Those fears were rampant and real. They would curl up through my vains, pervert my soul and take stock of it, parking themselves like automated rocket blasting through an open field. I mean, the thought of I walking around like a scarecrow with a tree popping out of my head, made the batman retreat into his cave in a jiffy. Nevertheless, it drove my bus.

I would patiently roomage through the fruit, painstakingly picking the seeds up, one by one, so none would see the daylight out of my stomach. It was a choreographed pungentry dance of fear, sans the horse off course, never witnessed.

I would play this dance religiously until I was grown enough to know better. I grew up and started reading, and the buzzer went off like that. I came to realize it was only a tattletale, an unpleasant story but how it came to be, is a mystery as the story itself; no one knows. I was told to, like countless other children and assumed it was common practice. Whatever it was, didn’t stop me from loving fruits. Like one annoyed rebellious child, I rolled out the dice, sprung to action and did just the opposite; I went for it and didn’t look back. I went for the fruits, so much so they are my muse, my meal, my zen, my handkerchief, my handbag. And as I was cutting an apple yesterday and came across this, I wondered if a tree would finally pop out of my head if I ate it. In the age of corona, it would perhaps be the perfect buffer.