How Do You Like THEM Apples?

Or, I Tried to Chop My Finger Off Again, and Then I Got Mad.

There I am, chopping an apple, minding my own business, and somehow my Wusthof paring knife slips through the core like it's nothing and catches itself in my thumb. AGAIN. Last time it was a peeler, this time it was a knife, but it was an apple both times. An apple a day fulfills your suicidal tendencies, as they say.

Oh, they don't say that?

After all the fuss I put in on the previous apple crop--the hours spent picking the apples with my family, the tree climbing, the buying of the peeler, the sacrificed finger tip--I was beyond irritated to learn that the crop was the wormiest crop I'd ever seen. The universal sadness of the failed farmer rose up and whomped me in the face. I'm a city girl 99.9% of the time, but my family has been growing apples--and a few other assorted crops--for a long time. I care about my food and I care about the time I put into it--or rather, the time that nature puts into it, because rain and sunshine do most of the work, you just have to wait it out. And when you've waited for months and planned out your pies, you're pretty devastated to see your plans dissolve. Each apple I cut in half to see worm tracks made me madder and madder, until I began to see the point behind DDT. Goddamn the birds, full speed ahead! Bleeding heart liberals who decry the fact that people could ever shoot Bambi should be lucky enough to put in months and months and months of sweat, blood, tears, and money into a vegetable crop, only to see a crop of angry deer trample your babies--I mean, vegetables. Your hopes, dreams, and tomato sauce for the next year, gone.

Of course, the situation today isn't that dire. It's America. My family has never been too poor to eat. The water is clean and food is artificially cheap. (And artificial, but that's another post.) There are always more apples. We aren't selling our apples for our livelihood, and even if the slugs get my mother's tomatoes, we can buy more. We aren't starving--in fact, that's the opposite of my problem!--but good Lord does it make me MAD, knowing how much time and effort went into that head of spinach, only to see it eaten by overfed snails.

Fooey.