Today’s Prompt — Orange
The way you eat an orange tells me enough about you to guess the rest. There are other foods that reveal the secret self in the way people eat them: popcorn, ice cream cones, fried eggs. Would you want to live with a person who uses a tea spoon to scoop out the yolk of a sunny side up egg like it was soppy orange sorbet? I wouldn’t either.
The orange presents a particular problem. There is that thick and oily outer skin. Then there is the pulpy white that promises to be gentle but turns bitter on the tongue. And then the wrapper of translucent parchment. And finally the liquid balloons zippered inside that wrapper, ready to burst with sweet juice.
You can guess from the styles of peeling how a person will view housecleaning, bill paying, and lovemaking. Here are your options:
Cut the orange into wedges or slices. The slices recall the jelly candy oranges that can lay in orderly ranks. The wedges rock and bobble on the plate and provide amusement as fake orange lips. Both keep the hands relatively clean, which is why mothers are forgiven for wanting their children to only eat the sliced kind.
Engineer the outer peel off by using a knife or other kitchen tool. This has the virtue of being easy on the fingernails but the sin of possibly cutting too deep and scoring the fruit at the center. I suppose one could argue that the risk is worth it, but I have noticed that people often will shrug off risk to others or objects when it means they can indulge their preferences.
Use the teeth to break the peel. Ii know at least one person who does this. My father will use his front teeth like a chisel. Since he is my father and due a certain amount of respect for that, I will say no more about this method.
The final method is to gouge the skin open with the finger with the aid of the fingernails. This involves a bit of struggle, of effort to break into the armor protecting the fruit. At this point, the hands have gotten smeared with the oil and feel vaguely tingly from the bitter brew of the pulp. The skin comes off fairly easily once the rind has been breached. For some, the freed orb is ready to eat. For others, the pulpy layer must be stripped clean before eating.
Which one are you?
HOW THIS WORKS: I have a jar of nouns. I pick one at random and post it. If I’ve done this right, none of the prompts will be something you’re excited to write about. The excitement comes through what you find as you write about the commonplace.
By the end of the day, write a minimum of 250 words but no more than 500 instigated by the noun.
Tomorrow, I will post my effort here and make a new post for whatever word comes out of the jar next. You are invited to post your writing or link to it in the comments so others can read it.
No critiques, please, but discussion of the process most welcome.
