The Pits
“If life is a bowl of cherries, why am I in the pits?”. For anyone under the age of 50 reading this, my apologies if you don’t recognize that phrase. It was the title of a book by a much funnier writer than me, Erma Bombeck. Also one who earned a lot of money at it and got books published with titles like “If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, Why Am I in the Pits?”
But that, my friends, is not the question we are asking today. No. The question we are asking today is, why is there a cherry pit in my bag of cherries of which I have already eaten three quarters?
Before we explore that further, let’s digress to the cost of cherries in the first place. Eggs? People are upset over the cost of eggs? Have you seen the price of cherries? Eggs are cheep, er, cheap in comparison.
Which is why, when I saw that Giant was having a sale on them, a really good sale on them, like $1.79 a pound sale, I was like, heck yeah, let me get some cherries. I don’t know about you, but paying over $10 for a bag of cherries just seems outrageous. And that’s not even for the organic ones. Or the Rainier ones. You have to take out a second mortgage to afford the Rainier cherries.
Ok, back to the point. I bought some cherries. They were delicious. I got close to the bottom of the bag and was about to finish them off when I saw it. A cherry pit. Laying right there among the last several cherries.
Now, those of you who know me and my OCD issues of contamination can imagine what this triggered for me. It looked something like this.
Inside Mary’s brain:
The Department of Anxiety, Fears, Worries, and General Panic.
Ethel: Martha, Martha, wake up! We got a hot one coming in! A cherry pit was just found in her mostly eaten bag of cherries!
Martha: Oh my! On it, dialing up the anxiety now and cracking through all the possibilities of what it could be and how it could kill her.
Ethel: Excellent, whatcha got? I’ll monitor her levels as you go through them.
Martha: Ok, well, first up is somebody ate a cherry to see if they were good (see previous blog post on that topic) and then put the pit back in the bag.
Ethel: Great! Her anxiety level has just kicked up several notches.
Martha: Now, sticking with that, the person that ate that cherry and put it in the bag could have any communicable disease possible, shall I run through some of them? Covid, Flu, Mononucleosis, TB, Malaria…
Ethel: Oh my, that’s really causing those anxiety levels to rise now. I think we’d best hold there, otherwise we might send her into Complete Panic Attack, and well, that’s best avoided if we can manage it. Let’s just keep her right at the brink.
“Ahem. Ahem, ladies.”
Ethel and Martha turned around.
Ethel: Mr. Spock? What are you doing here? This isn’t your department.
Spock: No, no it isn’t. But my Department of Logic and Rational Thought got an alert that you two were going at it a bit too hard and so I am here to try and course correct.
Martha: Well, that’s no fun. I promise you, we were not going to send her into Complete Panic Attack.
Spock: Be that as it may, we need to return her to calm, logic, rational thought. So, I am reminding her of some other possibilities. Like, maybe that was just some random cherry pit that somehow got pitted during the processing/bagging production of cherries. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that someone ate it and put it there.
Also, I am letting her know that even if it was that someone ate it and put it in there, the odds of them being sick with some horrible communicable disease that will kill her is highly unlikely.
Ethel: Well, Spock, it’s working. You have overridden our efforts and her fear and panic are considerably lowered. She’s clearly been doing a lot of work in this area, with her meditation, yoga, and therapy. Martha, we may have to work a lot harder in the future.
Spock: My work here is done, ladies. Heading back to my department. Live long and prosper.
So there you have it. It took some effort, but rational thought regained command of control center. And here we are, a couple of weeks post Pit in the Bag of Cherries Incident and I am no worse for wear.
I did however toss out those last several cherries at the time. Didn’t want to take too many chances. Good thing they were only $1.79 a pound.