While grocery shopping one day last summer, I passed an appealing display of cantaloupes. I don’t regularly buy them but they called to me so, as if I knew what I was doing, I picked one up and knocked on it to see if it was ripe. I’ve knocked on a lot of cantaloupes in my time, and they have all sounded the same. If I ever knock on a cantaloupe and it yells, “Nobody’s home!” I will know not to buy that one. Luckily this one passed the knock test, and I brought it home.
The next day I thought that after lunch I would cut up that melon and we would eat it outside for a fun desert, but the day got away from me, I never cut it up, and that night it laughed at me from the countertop. The thought had crossed my mind to cut it up right then so that the following day it would be ready for breakfast but, weary from an unending day of summer adventure, I resigned it to tomorrow’s duties. The next morning, the melon smiled at me ready to share its yummy goodness with my family, but my big knife mocked me from the kitchen sink as if knowing that having been up all night with a teething toddler would make the art of washing a knife and cutting a melon reach far beyond my creative scope for the morning. I moved the melon and grabbed the bananas…stupid melon, I thought.
That day was particularly exhausting and after the boys fell asleep I retired to the couch for some long overdue snuggles with my husband. My eyes kept drifting to that lousy cantaloupe. How was it still there? Why hadn’t I cut it? I hated that cantaloupe and I wished it would just jump off of my counter and commit melon suicide instead of taunting me and sneering about how lazy and unmotivated I was. Stupid melon!
Somehow the week passed and that darn melon, now tucked far behind the bananas and apples, had begun to mold. I still don’t know how exactly it came to this, but when I threw it away a little tear rolled down my cheek screaming “I bet your kids would have liked that melon, you lousy failure!” It seems so silly now, but during that sleep-deprived busy summer week it was the epitome of all that I couldn’t be…a cantaloupe cutter.
Well this week I did my grocery shopping online to be delivered to my house. I do this every once in a while because it makes me feel rich and successful – even though they don’t even charge extra for this service, I still feel like I must be someone very important to have my groceries brought to my home. While clicking away, I noticed that the cantaloupes were on sale and I ordered one with barely a thought, but then upon delivery as I set it on my kitchen counter I was suddenly reminded of my previous quarrel with the evil melon…how it took my peace, taunted me all week, and never did I even get to enjoy it’s juicy goodness. So before I knew it, I had my big knife in hand and I was gutting and hacking that bastard of a melon into perfect little pieces to be savored and enjoyed by all. I write this to you now as I’m eating my cantaloupe and vowing that never again will a melon make me cry!
