Fruit Cocktail

Some time ago, my good berk, Jo, set off looking for a book by Sandra Cisneros. In her search, she asked bookstore sales ladies, if not the snobby women at STC whose ovaries were being stewed by too much radiation from their photocopiers, that she needed a copy of "The House on Mangosteen.” (I never knew what STC meant. STC is the photocopy center nearest the UPLB gate with copy machines painted orange.)

I am not sure how far Jo had looked before she realized that she had the wrong title. She somehow heard the wrong fruit. Sir Mykel’s next reading assignment was “The House on Mango Street,” not Mangosteen!

It was hilarious!

I have never eaten mangosteen before. Tonight is the first time. Ate said it is just like eating santol. For a while santol was my favorite fruit. Except for its thick bitter/sour inner skin, I loved it. But I don’t know. I ceased playing favorites.

Plus I am not a fan of fruits. I don’t eat a lot of them and I don’t crave them as much as I occasionally crave for junk foods. Bad habit. Kids that’s something you shouldn’t imitate.

I don’t eat coconut. I like food cooked in gata (coconut milk) and I eat niyog (grated old coconut meat) when mixed with kakanin (Now that I don’t know how to translate! Haha!). But I don’t eat coconut or even drink its juice.

And here people thought that UPLB students thrive on buko (coconut) pie—as in they eat it morning, noon and night. But I say, “not true.”

It will be more possible for me to name the fruits I eat than the ones I say no to.

Although I may not appreciate fruits through my tongue and palate, my sense of sight and touch never cease to be amazed on how carefully crafted and unique every fruit is. Just as I told Kate, fruits are proofs that there is a grand designer of everything we see in our world.

The yellow mangoes are juicy yet firm. The green ones are dry and more compact. Lanzones on the other hand have translucent insides, much like lychees. Meanwhile rambutan, unlike lychees have spikes on their skin. Apples are crispy—in the fruit sense. Oranges are made up of pulps grouped together in segments which form a circle. Suha is almost similar if not for its drier pink pulps. Avocadoes have dark skin but bright green creamy insides. Last weekend I saw a fruit which I think came from Malaysia whose skin looked and felt like the scales of a snake. I could go on enumerating more fruits and their respective characteristics just to assert my point but I digress.

At the risk of sounding preachy and all, I would say that whenever I see fruits I am reminded that there is a god.

The effect of my fascination with fruits is similar to how the uniqueness of the human fingerprints affects Kate. And in our chat, we just have to marvel on how each of us is marked differently. Someone up there must be keeping a record of every single of one us. Kind of like how the NBI (or FBI) should. The only difference is the “big guy’s” database is more efficient.

And did you know that zebras’ stripes are unique, too? Just goes to show how encompassing the great galactic record must be.

I enjoyed my mangosteen. I ended up eating three.

Jo was able to read the correct book by Sandra Cisneros. She would not have passed ENG 101: English Prose Writing Class if she didn’t.

Now you see there is a god.