Peaches

I love peaches, but buying them from supermarkets is tricky business. Supermarket peaches may look ripe, fresh and succulent, but inside they may be dry, stale or even rotten. After years of selecting peaches, I still depend on luck to get some good ones.

Just like my haphazard relationships. They all looked beautiful at the outset, but there was really no way to tell of the outcome, which could be heartening, harrowing, or simply tasteless and a waste of life.

I wish I could do as a band plays in their song:

Moving to the country
I'm gonna eat a lot of peaches
Peaches come from a can
They were put there by a man
In a factory downtown
And if I had my little way

I'd eat peaches everyday
Sun-soaked bulges in the shade.

But in real life one cannot move to the countryside just to eat a lot of fresh peaches, neither is there any warranted peachy relationship growing in some orchard waiting to be picked. I suppose I still have to try and hope that luck will eventually bring me my "sun-soaked bulge in the shade."

Quite unlike my buddy Joe, who depends on no luck to get his tasty peaches. Recently I was with him at a supermarket in Palm Coast, Florida and he was eyeing a box of peaches on display, so I remarked to him how tricky it was to pick out the good ones. He looked at me like I was an idiot, wiped a peach on his sleeve, and to my consternation bit right into it. "Very sweet and juicy," he declared while happily chewing. "I'll get some of these."

On our way home he kept smirking at me while I was asking myself how come I had never thought of that simple solution, at least for peaches.