Seeing Red
Science, is the ultimate Unromantic. He’s that mildly-obese, fifty eight year old, married-for-almost-three-decades, couch potato. He’s the one more likely to mark a passing anniversary with a deafening belch than through the simple elegance of fragrant carnations. He can transform the splendor of a shooting star into a tepid theory of random mathematical probability.
Science has ruined my life or, at least, mangled it beyond reasonable recognition.
I’m a Tomato and this, is my story.
Used to be we tomatoes led a pretty straightforward, relatively-blissful existence. We didn’t ask for much - we aren’t very materialistic by nature – besides the odd support spine when needed, an affable squeeze at the supermarket and, of course, to be immortalized into
the ultimate spaghetti sauce on our way out the karmic door. We had a place. We liked the place. We knew the plan. We were cool with
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Seeing Red
Science, is the ultimate Unromantic. He’s that mildly-obese, fifty eight year old, married-for-almost-three-decades, couch potato. He’s the one more likely to mark a passing anniversary with a deafening belch than through the simple elegance of fragrant carnations. He can transform the splendor of a shooting star into a tepid theory of random mathematical probability.
Science has ruined my life or, at least, mangled it beyond reasonable recognition.
I’m a Tomato and this, is my story.
Used to be we tomatoes led a pretty straightforward, relatively-blissful existence. We didn’t ask for much - we aren’t very materialistic by nature – besides the odd support spine when needed, an affable squeeze at the supermarket and, of course, to be immortalized into the ultimate spaghetti sauce on our way out the karmic door. We had a place. We liked the place. We knew the plan. We were cool with the plan.
Then the aforementioned, blowhard known as science went and screwed it all up. Science, in its typically obstinate way, decided – they said clarified – that tomatoes are indeed more fruits than vegetables. Proclaim this to the world on this day: tomatoes are terribly misunderstood, lacking specific direction and technically, mis-filed!
So you’re thinking: What’s the big deal, right? To those uninformed and unsympathetic to our stoically organic ways, this likely seems very small potatoes (another staunchly proud member of the vegetable family who, by the way, really hates that idiom). To those of us directly affected by this epic resolution, it has forever altered all life as we know, or knew it.
Say, for example, you’re a kid and your name’s Tony, and for as long as you can remember you’ve been a member of the Anderson family. Then one day – say you’re turning eighteen and just starting figure out why God chose to bless you with such an impressive vine – you’re told you’re technically not Tony Anderson, you’re Tony Chin. How do you suppose you’d react?
Frankly I couldn’t care less what I’m classified as by guys in lab coats. We’re vegetables. We’ve always been vegetables and we’re quite rightly proud to be called a vegetable. Science be damned for trying to repatriate us.
You see it’s about lifestyle, not perception. Head to your produce aisle and where do you suppose you’ll find the tomatoes? Not hanging with the oranges, apples and Bosc pears – I can assure you that. We’re not that type of botany.
We tomatoes – The Red Army, as we’re often called – have a more, vegetable-centric mentality to begin with. Perhaps it’s years of sharing salad space with carrots, radishes and most types of lettuce that has made us inherently vegetable. The Veggie Culture is not an easy one to break into, believe us. Years of being told how nutritionally-sound and vital you are to sustaining human life can really make one’s head swell with smug self-importance (cabbage used to be half their present size, little more than two hundred years ago, for example).
Still, it’s a culture we’ve adapted to and grown very comfortable with. Sure, no one likes the parsnip but, acclimate yourself enough into the ways of the vegetable, and soon enough you’ll be able to excuse even the most reticent or boorish of ground-based yammie things.
Alas we know fruits; we’ve tried fruits and frankly, we ain’t fruits. Fruits are just so, well, fruity. They’re just so soft-skinned (except for pineapples who we think, for the record, should be with us) and overly-sensitive. I mean, where’s their hardiness? If the temperature isn’t exactly right or the humidity goes slightly off-kilter, Little Miss Melon loses her supple glow and wilts like a tissue in a bathtub.
All we’re basically asking for here is to be left alone. The status quo suits us just fine. Whatever it is that categorizes us – clinically – as fruit, just forget you know. Pretend we’re hard-shelled, and Irish and we taste like stagnant charcoal.
We get vegetables like Tony Chin gets the Andersons. We like it here. We’re happy being where we are, and who we are.
Now rutabagas on the other hand..
END
