We All Play with Our Food
But orange you glad he didn’t like bananas?
Sometimes the nexus of creativity and immaturity lay the groundwork for strange but beautiful things.
I first met Andy — Class of ’98 — at the beginning of his sophomore year, when he was 15. That means he’s approaching 41, or thereabouts, this year — difficult to think of this kid as a grown-ass man, but there we are.
He was tall and skinny, with his dark hair cut in one of those odd bowls that looks like a mushroom. A very 1990s style. Quite apropos, since Andy played with his food.
Andy’s mom — dutiful caretaker that she was — always packed a “nutritious and delicious” lunch, as they say, and Andy — growing boy that he was — always ate it down to the very last Ho-Ho. Everything, that is, except the obligatory piece of fruit that Mom included daily. And, of course, she always included a cute note to go along with the lunchtime comestibles.
Andy’s regular post-lunch activity was carving said fruit — usually an orange, tangerine, or one of those hybrid tangelos — into the faces of various characters. He used a pen, or sometimes his house key, and named his creations, too. Ninja Orange, Principal Orange, Pirate Orange, Nerd Orange — we saw quite a few of these sticky renditions, and I almost always encouraged the young man to…
