All Fruit Must Die

Samuel Roe
Jul 22, 2017 · 3 min read

Tomorrow is the most important day of the year for me. It’s not a famous date, at least not here. There’s nothing important about the fourth Saturday in July, either, but there is something special about tomorrow for me.

It’s called Melonfest, and it’s amazing.

Sometime within the last decade, my three best friends and I decided to begin a new tradition. It started with the simple desire to blow up a watermelon with fireworks. That, as it turns out, is more difficult than you might thing, but in the process, we discovered something wonderful.

You see, in order to create the holes in the watermelon for us to put fireworks into, we decided to use throwing knives and bow and arrow. Blowing up a watermelon with fireworks may be difficult, but making holes in a watermelon? That’s the easiest thing in the world.

And it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

It’s evolved over the years. Now it’s something we start planning in January, even though we don’t hold it until July. We set the date so we can make sure and have it off work well in advance. We spend the weeks working up to it talking about food preparation, and scheduling times to get together to build the backdrop.

Because no standard archery target will do. No, we have to rebuild the backdrop every year in order to make sure it can stand up to the assault of ricocheting axes and knives. Every year our two engineers, J and B, are certain they’ve made the most durable backdrop yet, but it still usually fails to the rain of blades.

But that’s okay, because I know rebuilding it is one of their favorite traditions together, even with the heat.

Because as much fun as it is to set up watermelons and throw sharp objects at them, ritually sacrificing them to our dark, pagan gods — sorry, bit of a tangent there. As much fun as it is to slay the fruit, it’s the time we spend together which is what makes the day special.

Yeah, this is my version of Christmas. I know, crazy, right?

You see, these three best friends of mine, and the other close friends we’ve met along the way, they’re the closest people to me in the world. They know more about me than anyone, and we’ve been through a lot together. We’ve shared more thoughts, fears, concerns, dreams, and deep, existential emotions together than I think most people have with their significant others.

And I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world.

Since we left high school, we’ve managed to maintain our friendships. We’ve managed to hold on to that closeness, despite several times we were at each other’s throats. Through all of that, we had Melonfest.

It may be weird, it may be the strangest tradition you’ve ever heard of, but it is a time when the three people who know me best are guaranteed to be there, and we can feel like we’re ruling the world again.

Sometimes it feels like high school is just around the bend again.

I didn’t get any writing done today. It’s not because I didn’t want to, I was just too busy preparing for the best day of the year. Tomorrow will be busy too, but it’ll be good for the soul.

After that, writing will resume as normal, and it’ll be better for it.

Peace and love,

Samuel D. Roe (Cynus)

Written on 7/21/2017

P.S. Did you know I write fiction? Did you also know I have a Patreon and would love your support? You can find out more about both of these items here: https://www.patreon.com/Cynus

This post brought to you by my amazing Patrons: Bill, James, Paul, Joe, Mark, Charles, Amr, Mark, Steve, Don, and Jos.

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