Fruits of our Labor

I have always had a problem with throwing out fruit. Any kind of fruit.  What this means is that I always have a fruit bowl on my kitchen counter and at any given time there could be pieces of fruit in various stages of decay.  I will admit that some have seen better days. I still won’t get rid of them until I absolutely have no choice.

Usually, me disposing of a piece of fruit is prompted by a casual comment from my husband.  He might look at the liquified grapes and say to me….”Hey, Mare, working on your own wine label?”  Or passing by a brown banana he might ask, “Fruit fly experiment?”   I will toss the insect ridden banana out but I am thinking, ” I was going to make banana bread, mister, but you just lost out.”

Anyway, I have had a grapefruit in the bowl for months. Yes, that’s right, months.  There were originally four of them and they were a gift.  I found that grapefruit, in the right environment, doesn’t attract insects or liquify.  But was I ever really going to eat it after watching it for months? No, but I wasn’t going to throw it out either until it begged me to….

That day was yesterday. I walked by and touched the grapefruit as I am prone to do.  Hard as a rock.  As it has been for some time. But yesterday it just made me think of a bowling ball. I picked it up, stood in the long hallway of my home, and pretended it was a bowling ball. I backed up, measured the distance with my eye (one eye shut and head slightly cocked to the right like the professional bowlers)   I lined it up, ran a few feet and let that sucker rip…….down the hall it whizzed until it finally hit the front door.  Boom! A perfect strike!

Meanwhile, my husband who was working from home looks up from his computer and says, “Why did you do that?”   I said, “I don’t know….I just saw it and it reminded me of a bowling ball and I just couldn’t help myself.”  He laughed and said, “You are a funny girl.”  He then went back to his computer.

But I got to thinking.  Isn’t it fun to act upon those little thoughts that pop into our head once in awhile? The things we don’t normally do because we are adults? I am not talking about putting your hand over an open flame to see what it feels like.  I am talking about letting that little kid that is hidden inside of us out for just a little while.  Remember running just for the fun of it and not because it was good exercise?

A few years ago I was at a kid’s birthday party and there was this big blow up contraption that the kids could use to run up and down.  I looked at my friend, Nan, and she looked right back at me and I said, “I’ll beat ya!” and we were off …two forty year old women acting like ten year olds. It was a blast. Unfortunately, Nan was limping the next day but she still thought it was worth it. That’s what I’m talking about.

So step in that mud puddle,  laugh really loud instead of stifling it,  run with the children or grandchildren just for the heck of it regardless of how silly you might look ,  do whatever it is that you might have hesitated doing because you were thinking about what others thought and not what you thought…….enjoy those moments and when someone asks, “Why did you do that?”  I hope you can happily answer, “I don’t know. I just couldn’t help myself.”

And when you have that grapefruit in your hand…..let that sucker fly!

That, my dears, is the fruit of our labor.

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