What's in a Name?

Summer is finally here, and because of it, I decided to invade the produce section and corner the market on all things fruit. I’m a huge fruit fan. In fact, I could easily become a very bad fruitarian, were it not for my love of poached eggs and veggies (mainly spinach) and if I only had a decent memory. But I don’t. You see, one needs a decent memory to remember to take vitamins and supplements to replace those missing from such a radical dietary change. Since I don’t happen to possess one, I’d likely die of malnutrition or some related issue. (Perhaps I should have invaded the fish a la brain food section instead.)

You know, trying something new is a lot like trying a new author or genre (and yes, my thoughts always go back to writing). At least, it is for me. Either I love it or I put it down—there seems no middle ground. But anyway, back to the fruit... thing.

Funny that adults will try almost anything, but kids won’t eat anything that doesn’t look right, or rather, doesn’t look right after it’s cooked. Take broccoli. Or spinach. Or turnips. Or, horror of horrors, Brussels Sprouts. Heck, take me and mushrooms for instance. I still remember the sight of my first cooked mushroom. Pan-fried slugs, I thought. No way am I eating that, I thought. Mom’s finally flipped out. After mom served it numerous times, always with the threat that I’d “never leave the table” until I try it (and after an hour each time of making gag noises and facial expressions that would make Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes proud—ones that made my mom beg me to go outside), I finally tried one—just one. See, a kid has to build up to these things as dramatically and as vocally as possible, and that means letting your audience (the same one who’d inadvertently turned herself into a captive audience via my captivity; after all, someone had to actually watch me eat the mushroom you know) wait. Let the suspense mount. Let the battle of wills play out. David and Goliath, good and evil, unknown veggie and kid. The mushroom was excellent by the way. A little cold though.

So as I was saying, I loaded up on all things fruit: Red Delicious apples, huge oranges, bananas, cantaloupe, strawberries, watermelon... and low and behold, what did I come across, but this:


I know—revolting, isn’t it. You betcha. It’s so ugly it almost screamed to be looked at it and then dared you to look away. Sort of like a car accident. Almost... alien, really. Okay, so that’s a bit of a stretch. But never in my life had I seen anything that so reminded me of the musical “Little Shop of Horrors” or maybe a pod from the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” before, especially not for sale in the produce section of my lowly supermarket. Heck, I half expected it to start singing or maybe crawling toward me. I did... until a very well dressed, middle-aged woman wandered over with a plastic bag in hand and started going through the stack of them.

“I just love these!” she said to no one in particular, holding one up like she was an archeologist who’d just unearthed the long lost Egyptian “Book of the Living.” Obviously, I wasn’t seeing what she was seeing. “Don’t you?”

“What it is?” I asked, still partly expecting a tongue or harpoon-like appendage to fire out the top and adhere to her face.

“It’s Dragon Fruit!”

Okay then, so that name made sense. I mean, it definitely looked like something a dragon might eat. Or lay. Or... something. And the name certainly intrigued me. Then again, an intriguing title or a well-known author has often influenced my reading choices. And that very thing has disappointed me more than not, too. Same with fruit... which made me wonder if perhaps they (whoever ‘they’ are) purposely gave the hideous-looking thing a good name in order to sell it to those of us whose pallets lean toward something at least slightly aesthetically pleasing. (Prime example: I will not eat liver. End of discussion.)

“You should try one!” she said, shoving the precious what’s-it in the bag and depositing it in my cart. “Just peal off the red. The flesh inside is white-ish grey, sweet, and really seedy.”

I didn’t want to eat any of it, and I certainly didn’t want it in my cart. “Okay,” I said. “And thanks.”

“Remember—don’t eat the red.”

For a moment, I thought to ask what would happen if I did, but let it drop. Besides, my eyes were glued to the “thing” now in my cart and my mind was stuck on three key words (flesh, white-ish and grey), which to me sounded about as appealing as raw squid (no knock against raw squid lovers intended).

For those of you dying to know what it tasted like, I’m not going to tell you, anymore than I’d tell you about a novel you’ve just purchased or an author you’ve just heard about. What I will say from one writer to another, however, is never to be afraid to try new styles, new genres, new voices. New... things. You never know. You may be pleasantly surprised.