10 Ways To Break All Of The Cider House Rules and Endure Apple Picking This Fall
For unknown reasons, you feel compelled against your will to drape yourself in infinity scarves. You find yourself in the spice aisle, comparing organic cardamoms to cinnamons, with no memory of how you got there. Recurring nightmares about miniature gourds force you to pop caffeine pills to stay awake.
Something is wrong.
You smell the change in the air: lactose intolerants are throwing up pumpkin spiced vomit outside Anthropologie and the pile of leaves you raked up last week is now a dense, wet mass of cat shit. You gag on the morning static of Wisconsin Public Radio begging for its annual contribution.
As if on cue, a Facebook message pings your iPad. It’s Shayla, your basic college roommate. Your index finger shakes in fear. You’re terrified at what you’ll find but you also know you have no choice but to open it:
Hey hoe! You ready to get our cozy on? Sunny Hills Apple Farm grand opening this weekend! LOL xoxo
✧༺♥༻∞ clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose ∞༺♥༻✧
It’s time for your yearly hang and torture: apple picking with Shayla in Waukesha.
So run to the taxidermist and get your puffy vest re-puffed. Shayla will be picking you up in her Dodge Caravan this Saturday at rush hour. No need for snacks- the van’s carpeted seats are full of moist Cheerios.
To make this futile quest for sour and unripe fruit bearable, follow these 10 steps to live, laugh, and regurgitate this apple picking season:
- Hide in the corn maze and scare children.
Bring a wide brimmed, black hat and Bible. Sit on a stump reading verses à la Children of the Corn, rocking back and forth.
2. Cause a scene by eating a “poisoned” apple.
Fall into a coma-like-sleep that you can only be revived from by a kiss with the hottest employee. Your choices: Brett, 16, the parking lot attendant who’s getting his learner’s permit this year, or Mel, 72, just happy to be here and keeping busy post retirement.
3. Ask pointed questions about white women taking good jobs away from immigrants.
Remind white women of their biggest fear: hard manual labor with no recognition.
4. Get a refund by biting into an apple full of meth.
Note: This will work best if you bring your own meth.
5. Loudly congratulate workers on their use of herbicide and other genetic engineering.
You believe in the marvel of science and the environmental benefits of turning this pile of trash natural forest into an Insta-ready orchard.
6. Fart loudly on people’s full apple buckets. Let them know you’ve been hired by the farm for crop dusting.
See above.
7. Charge people one dollar to use the porta-potties.
They might guffaw at first but an apple-picker’s need to not shit their pants in front of their mother-in-law after a full day of an apple-only diet will always win. Use this money for a downpayment on a nice house near the American Family Field parking lot.
8. Stage a mutiny on the old-timey choo-choo train.
Cackle loudly and announce to the riders they’ve stepped aboard the Crazy Train! Tie up Stan, the Conductor, and hold him for a ransom of 666 apple-cider donuts. Push the train up to its maximum speed of 8 miles per hour and chomp into a live bat. The bat should hold you over until you receive the donuts.
9. Hop the petting zoo fence, force-feed Sir Charles the Goat boxed wine, and maybe make out with him a little.
This is what Dionysus commandth this Fall Equinox.
10. Sacrifice Sir Charles to Dionysus as a thank you for this beautiful harvest.
Ask two kids to hold Sir Charles down while you slit his throat with a commemorative Sunny Hills Apple Farm pocket knife. Have a third kid collect Sir Charles’ blood with a Sunny Hills Apple Farm big gulp. Rub the blood all over your naked body and become one with Sir Charles.
NOTE: Be careful when handling sharp objects around children.
If PETA or the sheriff haven’t been called — meet Shayla back at the Caravan with your $200 bag of rotten apples. Don’t worry about finding room for them in your fridge- you’ll throw them out the window somewhere on I-94 to fatten up the roadkill.
