It's boyscout season and I have apples. I have the apples I bought at the greengrocers this morning and I have the 6 extra apples I bought on the way home after succumbing to the annual boyscout fundraising drive.
I do this every year. Once I have accumulated a few apples I tell myself that I'm going to stop, that I'll be stronger next time but then, a kerchief-clad gradeschooler flanked by a protective parent takes a few tetative steps towards me and before I know it, I'm pulling out my wallet.
I'm biased with my donations. I seek out the shy ones, the ones hugging the wall or being pushed forward by parents eager to get rid of the damn apples and return home to the weekend papers. If the parents are shy as well, if I detect that desperate "maybe I can just buy all of the apples myself and spare us both this agony" glimmer in thier eye - I buy two.
I recognize my patronage for what it is: a perverse attempt to compensate for my own early childhood fundraising trauma. As a child so painfully shy that conversations with my grandparents set off 'stranger danger' panic attacks, I hated girlguides and I really hated selling cookies.
Every year I would pair up with the same friend and we would make the rounds pushing our chocolate and vanilla junk. My friend was an outgoing chatterbox with matching ribbons in her pigtails. I was toungetied, unable to lift my self-styled, unevenly pigtailed head to make eye contact, and usually returned home with a full box of cookies.
And so, for every shy child and reluctant parent out there, I buy apples. I buy more apples than I could possibly need, I buy apples that I can't even identify, and I will spend the rest of the morning searching my recipe books for things to make that require lots of apples but very little talent because I can't cook to save my life. But that's another story.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
link
yogic and not-so-yogic musings from my so called life...
what other people say
- "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known" Carl Sagan
Links
About Me
promises made, september 2001
To live a life true to myself. To live with conviction. To dare to live outside the box. To be open. To follow my instincts. To always remember that it is up to me to design a life that matters.
2 comments:
You can cook! Do you remember the year that I was the 'cookie' captain and was responsible for balancing all the monies received - me with my astounding inability to manage detail work. I think I had to purchase the entire inventory to make it balance!
take heart there once were approx 161 variety of apples in Canada alone, where as now in our increasingly homoginized world there are unfortunately roughly 44 remaining. (these numbers you might easily dispute , but you get the point), at some time then in future only one reciepe may be necessary.
You were as a child shy (these days a desirable character trait) and so sweet you hurt my teeth!!
Post a Comment