Sunday, August 15, 2010

Apricot surprises

A couple of weeks ago, I risked life and limb to pick some apricots in a friend's tree. While pitting some of those apricots, I cut into one that had an earwig in the middle. It scrambled to get away, crawling towards my hands. It happened so fast that I gave a loud yelp and dropped the apricot into the sink. My skin was crawling as I watched the earwig drop from the apricot into the mouth of the garbage disposal. My yelp was so loud that Josh heard me all the way back in his room, despite the fact that his music was playing. I’m embarrassed to say that I was so completely grossed out that I couldn’t reach into the sink with my bare hands to remove the pit so that I could turn on the garbage disposal and filet the little sucker. Instead, I grabbed the tongs, gingerly removed the pit, prodded the apricot down the drain, and turned on the garbage disposal. It was not very manly, and somewhat out of character for me. After all, this was not the first time in my life that I’ve cut open an apricot and found an earwig.

Chopping the earwig into little pieces did not do much for my psyche, though. I just couldn’t bring myself to cut open any more apricots. I realized that I would need rubber gloves that come up to my elbows before I would be psychologically prepared to face another apricot surprise. So between my psychosis and J-girl’s busy schedule, the apricots never got processed, and instead rotted away in the side room. Josh and I finally threw them away. And that was even traumatic, because I kept waiting for some of them to explode and hundreds of earwigs to pour out of them. Ew!

New extreme sport: bare-handed apricot pitting.


Gloves only make it slightly better.


"Nah, I wasn't scared a bit."

1 comment:

Steverino said...

As good as the third picture is, the look on your face in the second picture is far better. I will always remember that, even with extensive therapy.