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July 3, 2006Anchoress identifies source of world’s problemsAgainst all sense, and my own better judgement, I today took a trip to the local Costco in order to buy hamburgers, chicken legs and marinade in the mass quantities needed in order to entertain guests on the Fourth of July. It was there, in the teeming, steaming rotisserie chicken section of the store that my senses became heightened and my consciousness got raised. I had an epiphany. The problem with the whole world, and everything in it, is fruit. Specifically strawberries and pineapples. And melons of all variation. But mostly, it’s the strawberries. This understanding came upon me not in the light breath of an angel’s song, but in the crash of one shopping cart head-on into mine, the spilling of a recently taken-from-the-spit chicken (and its bubbling hot juices) onto my sandal-clad foot and the unmistakable sound of a Long Island woman out of control. “Oh, my Gawwwwd, I’m so sooooooaaaawry! Ah you awriiiiiiht? I was just tryin’ ta get ta them strawberries! Oh, my Gawwwd, I feel so baaaiiihhhd!” Let me try to do justice to the way this singular creature (she exists nowhere but on Long Island and in 4 of New York City’s 5 boroughs) pronounced the word “strawberries,” because - as Captain Queeg will tell you - the strawberries are key to the revelation. For the purposes of this narrative, anytime you encounter the word “strawberry(ies)” do not imagine “straw” to be pronounced, as it is west of the Rockies, “strahh.” Nor may you take it to sound like a Kate Hepburn mid-lanticish “strahw.” No, in order to find enlightenment - in order to understand what I came to understand as I clutched at my greasy, burning foot, assured the woman that all was quite alright and bade her to please hurry along - you must in this case imagine “strawberry” to be heard thusly: “Stru-auorwwwberries.” Elongate the “au” sound until it resembles the sound you made in college after too many boilermakers and add an “oar-w” to it, and you begin to do it justice. This lady was not the only person behaving badly over summer fruit. Now, I generally avoid fruit. Aside from Fuji Apples, Bing Cherries and an occasional naval orange, fruit and I do not hang together. I find most fruits (and fruit juices) to be indigestible company and they burn my tongue, besides. When I encounter fruit, my practice is to make a detour toward the breads. This is probably why I did not understand until today the enormous impact fruit has on the world and the people in it. Corralled fruit-side by the pre-holiday crowd of shoppers, I found myself surrounded by peaches, plums, nectarines, grapes, mangoes, bananas, troubling red seedy things I could not comprehend, and pinapples and strawberries. Most of the fruit seemed perfectly respectable, laying there in all innocence, not really impacting the world. The troublemakers were the strawberries and pineapples who were - quite tellingly - isolated together in one aisle, a snobbish little clique, and they were inciting a riot. “Ohmigawwwwd,” a man cried to his wife. “Stru-auorwwwberries! Hon, we gotta get struauorwwwberries!” He sounded, my hand to Gawd, like he’d been clued in to the mysterious and mystical powers of the berries all his life, and had thus far been denied access to them. His wife was equally starry-eyed, but her prostrations were meant for another. “Lookit the poineapple! Oh my Gawd, LOOKIT the POINAPPLE! I gotta get dose!” Lowly grapes were cast thoughtlessly cast aside. Plums, proudly showing off their darkened summer curves, lay unmolested by the most determined fruit-squeezers. People were falling all over themselves for da stuauorberries and da poinapples. Even the lovely, quiet Indian lady in the sari, with whom I’d co-incidentally been traveling through much of the store, lost her reserve upon sight of the berry. “Gopal!” she hollared to her son in a voice surprisingly like a claxon horn. “Strawbeddies! You get the strawbeddies! I’ll get the (insert Hindu word for foul, scratchy, acidic, tongue-burning fruit, aka pineapple)” She then motored over to the pineapple like a small, decorative Sherman Tank and began elbowing (gently, but firmly) people away from her chosen pineapple - the one pineapple to rule them all - and she clutched it to herself and made off like Gollum with his Precious. Fruit, I decided, makes people lose their minds. That can’t be good. I checked out and made my way to my car, mulling over the problem of fruit and its impact on the world. I watched a boundary-challenged father allow his insistant five-year old daughter to haul a watermelon from their wagon and into their SUV. She nearly dropped the thing; and her knees buckled and her back bent under the weight as she doggedly clutched the enormous, seed-filled seducer to her chest before launching it haphazardly onto a pile of hamburger rolls. “Aw, look what you did,” the stupid father moaned, “you crushed the bread with the melon.” “That’s because she should not have been allowed to carry a giant piece of fruit, you melonhead,” the crabby mother opined, and family fun-time began in that car. Having hastily packed my own purchases, I pulled out from my parking spot and spied an attractive blonde woman in my rear view mirror. She carried a pineapple and a pack of socks, and when I tell you that she was gazing upon her pineapple with a look of fascinated awe, I do not exaggerate. Entranced by its thorny lure, the woman seemed completely unaware of her surroundings, and I hastily jammed on my brakes. She walked into my car. Yes. Carrying a pineapple, the woman walked. Into. My car. Head-on. Her abdomen and boobs went boinnnnng! “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, laughing at herself, “I didn’t even see you! I was looking at my pineapple.” “Yes,” I smiled, cringing inwardly and begging God and all of the angels in heaven that this woman would not now find it necessary to file a police report and sue my ass for having the temerity to be in her way while she was walking amid moving cars and admiring her tropical fruit. “I saw you looking at your pineapple.” “Isn’t it huge?” she asked proudly, reminding me of a former sister-in-law showing off her engagement diamond. “It’s just lovely,” I offered as she happily walked away. She was beaming. Simply beaming. A big pineapple had completely stolen her brains and replaced them with some sort of happy-soma thing. You could have fed her soylent green, and she would be beaming, still. She had a pineapple. All was right with her world. The frenzy of the fruitlovers disturbed me greatly. In the space of one hour, I had seen fruit inspire two accidents that could have resulted in injury or - were I or others the litigious types - lawsuits. I had seen fruit cause people to knock other people aside. I had seen it rattle their priorities. Fruit had caused people’s eyes to glaze over, their jaws to go slack, their reason to flee. My experience at Costco has given me a glimpse into the core of universal behavior, and the core is rotten and has far too many seeds. Fruit, I now understand, causes within people a diabolical disorientation, and that disorientation spreads into every aspect of humanity. Fruit captivates the attention and leads to painful mishaps. Fruit causes aggression, which leads to war. It inspires prostration and adoration, which leads to idolatry and misplaced allegiances. Fruit flummoxes a man’s ability to reason, impacting his marriage and his daughter’s self-esteem and future lumbar health. Fruit maketh a woman into a blithe-and-brainless spirit, content to bounce from car-to-car like a well-flicked pinball. These people go out into the world. They write books. They teach. They govern nations. They program network television. They make editorial decisions in news departments - all while distracted and disoriented by a small red berry that is, in my opinion, useful only as a delivery system for dark chocolate, and a scratchy yellow thing that is neither a pine nor an apple. No wonder the world is in the shape its in. But I make you this promise. I will never succumb to the lure of the fruit. I will never allow myself to become disoriented and possessed by this diabolical controller. When you come here, you are safe. Me and my Cheez-its, we swear it. Aside: I have had an email or two accusing me of antisemitism in this post, apparently because the reader attached a Jewish persona to the typical Long Island accents I’ve tried to draw here. Since my impression of the woman with the chicken was that she was as Irish-American and freckled as I am, and the rest were largely “generic” impressions I got, I can only assume that if someone wants to think of any of these folks as specifically Jewish, then that’s what they’ll do. Before accusing me of antisemitism ask yourself, perhaps, why you assigned a Jewish persona to the accents. Meanwhile, clearly, conveying accents is not something I write well. I’ll have to work on it! http://theanchoressonline.com/2006/07/03/anchoress-identifies-source-of-worlds-problems/trackback/ 31 Responses to “Anchoress identifies source of world’s problems” |
July 3rd, 2006 at 5:55 pm
What a great post! I haven’t laughed this hard in a while!
Still, we are suspicious. You said, “I will never succumb to the lure of the fruit.”
Uh huh- you’ll just won’t stop writing about fruit. Just like a reformed smoker won’t quit obsessing about cigarettes.
July 3rd, 2006 at 7:20 pm
And don’t even ask what I went through when someone was passing out fresh raspberry samples the last time I was at the store. It caused a great stampede and milling around and I almost went down for the third time with my cart locked wheel-in-wheel with an avid fruit lover’s cart. Amen!
July 3rd, 2006 at 7:51 pm
[...] The Anchoress has figured out the source of all the world’s problems. And it ain’t what you thought. [...]
July 3rd, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Deares Achoress, what a welcome release from the worries of the news! I too laughed out loud.
But summer tastes like a juicy necatrine.
July 3rd, 2006 at 8:07 pm
“By their fruits ye shall know them.”
Actually, this post of A’s could cause some coffee-onto-keyboard accidents.
A gets an A+, a gold star, the works.
At work after meetings sometimes a big bowl of raspberries, blueberries, and slices of sweet pineapple used to be left. It used to amaze me that there was no rush from the office workers to seize their portion of those leftovers. When not eating them, I could stare at the uneaten ones, as I waited for others to come and get their fair shares. But so few did so. I ended up eating most of those fruit, again and again, and I also got to stare at them a lot, too!
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:39 pm
This is the most hilarious thing I’ve read or heard in a long time!
Great post, A!
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:46 pm
I only shop for fruit and other comestibles later than most - close to eleven in the evening. No fights with other clients. No mob scenes.
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And… it’s TX, so it’s nice to find some good Southern peaches. Mmmm… mmmm…
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But, when you wrote those words with the NY accent… that brought memories of going to the grocery store or La Marketa in the Bronx with my aunt and my grandmother, and to A & P by myself in Westchester County!
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I’m sure the sig.other would have a fingernails-in-the-chalkboard moment if I read this to him, because he spent four years of his life surrounded by Long Islanders… He who considers Arkansas his boyhood home will then remember why he went for a Puerto Rican girl like me, after all the Long Island girls he met just… didn’t cut it for him. I suspect it was the accent… Oh, well…
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I’m going to have to remind him that my dear niece will have that accent, too. She lives in Port Washington.
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Stupid me! La Merketa is in Manhattan! Aaaargh!
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:58 pm
[...] I’m going to give you fair warning. When you read this post you are strongly urged to have nothing in your mouth or hands that can damage your keyboard or monitor. An empty bladder is also advised. [...]
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:00 pm
Is there a strawberry shortage in the East or something? Here in Chicago, we seem to have strawberries and pineapples all year round(South American shipments kick in just about the time the Northern growing season ends.) Maybe you have stumbled on to a quick way to identify Democrat voters. I’ll be sending fruit trucks to the Eastern polling places come election day in November. Toucan Sam had it right all along…
Beautiful piece, Anchoress!
P.S. See if you can get your hands on that Cosco parking lot surveillance tape in case Ms Pineapple changes her mind. “Boob Whiplash” is a dream for certain members of the legal profession, and there are lots of lawyers in the Kennedy family!
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:17 pm
Hahahahahaha!
Actually choking on watermelon as I’m reading this. See? When you’re right; you’re right.
July 4th, 2006 at 12:36 am
Please continue making posts like this one.
July 4th, 2006 at 1:08 am
Great fun, wonderfully written. I think you had as much fun writing it as we did reading it.
If you consider tomatoes fruit, I could easily make your list of freakishly, diabolically obsessed fruit slaves. I’ve been obsessed with the red devils since a very young age. They DO something to me. Luckily, I married an Italian who understands and who shares the addiction.
July 4th, 2006 at 7:26 am
The Collect for Independence Day
O ETERNAL God, through whose mighty power our fathers won their liberties of old; Grant, we beseech thee, that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain these liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus…
July 4th, 2006 at 7:39 am
[...] The Anchoress has found the root of all evil, the thing that is the curse of the world and all that is going wrong with it. Please, do stay away from the ball bearings, Anchoress. Lest people think you obsessive! [...]
July 4th, 2006 at 8:00 am
[...] UPDATE 3: On the other hand, if you plan to attend a cookout today, please beware the Giant Hypnotic Fruit. Filed under: [...]
July 4th, 2006 at 8:28 am
I made dh a fresh East Texas peach-n-blackberry cobbler yesterday, as a treat for being the Best G-daddy in the World for his help with new little man - the good kind where you actually make the crust yourself, not just dump some cake mix and butter on top, you lazy slut.
Why do I now feel as though I’ve contributed to global warming or something?
Too funny! Have a great Fourth!
July 4th, 2006 at 10:04 am
I remember when I first visited my future husband at West Point and he took me into New York City.
Some of the New Yorkers (or Long Islanders) were so forward and pushy that it kind of scared me. I mean, we were pretty friendly down south in Arkansas but we didn’t get in people’s faces.
I think I ran into that very fruit woman. The one with the pineapple. I was just minding my own business but that wasn’t enough for her.
I think the Anchoress has something. Along with Bill Whittle’s Tribes we must now in order to understand human kind also consider the Anchoress’ offering of Fruits.
July 4th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Dearest Anchoress,
I read this post last night and laughed and laughed - too funny!!! Needless to say, as I cut up 4 lbs. of strawberries this morning, I felt very ashamed of myself. I prayed to St. Michael. And, I thought of you the whole time!!
July 4th, 2006 at 10:30 am
[...] Last year I was enlightened when I read Bill Whittle’s Tribes but now my understanding has been broadened immensely by this post of The Anchoress. [...]
July 4th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
[...] The Anchoress has some colorful experiences at her local Costco, leading to a bold new theory. By JDZ Feedbacks on this entry via RSS 2.0 Please leave a Comment or discuss via Trackback! Comments Please Leave a Comment! [...]
July 5th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
OMG is that priceless! I laughed until i rolled as i read this. You’re absolutely brilliant, Anchoress, absolutely brilliant.
July 5th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
[...] A new posting from the curmudgeonly Anchoress can give us all reason to consider the role of fruit in our lives. For more details you can see here or you can simply accept my assertions that the Anchoress has, well, gone bananas. [...]
July 6th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
What can I say? Make mine nectarines…
July 7th, 2006 at 7:52 am
[...] Anchoress writes an extremely amusing post about the Source of the World’s Problems. [...]
July 11th, 2006 at 10:07 pm
[...] point. No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTMLallowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> [...]
July 25th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
I hate to be the fly in the ointment, but I think this post is a bit too mean…
September 22nd, 2006 at 9:12 am
[...] I’m in and out for most of the morning. There is fruit (and you know how much I love fruit) and fowl to buy and a walk on the beach to talk. Back later! [...]
November 16th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
[...] This recipe, from a pal named Victoria, suits the bill - a lovely light buttery cake with meringue and whipped cream…yum. Some people put strawberries in the middle and on top of it, but I think I have made my position on strawberries abundantly clear, and I like it just as it is: [...]
June 9th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
[...] are covering ourselves with glory, these days, does it? Well…maybe we’ll all do better when the strawberries come out! - another - apolitical - snapshot, from 2006. Sierra Faith tracked back with Let’s Cool It… [...]
June 10th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
[...] Right” certainly makes itself known. Well…maybe we’ll all do better when the strawberries come out! - another - apolitical - snapshot, from 2006. No Apology tracked back with Just Chillin’… [...]