The Greatest of Fruits
My son, who would prefer to eat nothing but chicken nuggets and chocolate pudding, decides that his new favorite food is grapefruit, and since this one of the healthiest things he’s put in his mouth – ever – I went straight out and bought a five pound bag of ruby reds.
So we’re sitting at the table mowing down this bag of grapefruit and my kids are extolling its virtues. They squeeze the fruit into their bowls and then slurp it up.
My husband says, “It’s great fruit, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s really fantastic,” I say.
My son says, “I love it, but the name is weird. I mean, it’s nothing like a grape. And a grape is already a fruit.”
“It’s one of life’s great mysteries,” I say.
“Wait a second,” my husband says, “Is it grapefruit – or greatfruit?”
“Are you pulling my leg?” I laugh, but, alas, he is earnest.
The expression on his face is quizzical. “Well, which is it?”
My 12 year old daughter looks down at her bowl of juice and shakes her head. “Oh, dad.”
I take out the sack from the fridge because he’s likely to not believe me without proof. “5 pounds of Texas Sweet ruby red grapefruit.” I brandish the label.
“Huh. Well, would you look at that.”
“In all your 38 years, did this never come up?”
“I kind of remember someone laughing at me and correcting me, once. In my teens,” he reflects. “But it truly IS great. And I like that name for it more. So I think I forgot that it was really grapefruit. To me, it will always be greatfruit. It should be greatfruit.”
Reality be damned. It really should be.
The thing is, I honestly can’t tell if he’s kidding. Did he know it was ‘grapefruit’ all along? My husband is rather a visionary. He has a brain that is so sharp and so creative – and also so focused – that ordinary things – such as which side of the envelope the stamp goes on – completely escape his notice.
He has a friend like this as well. His name is Steve and, years ago, he came to spend a few days with us. On his last day, he insisted on making us dinner. He went to the market and brought back a number of ingredients, including a do-it-yourself pizza dough in which you add water, press to the pan, add toppings and serve.
Steve banged around for a bit in our galley kitchen and soon had the pizza in the oven. After 20 minutes, he checked the pizza, but the crust “wasn’t quite there,” he said. Twenty more minutes. Nope, that crust still needed more time.
After an hour, I went to take a look. I opened the oven door to a mass of pasty goo topped with watery cheese and oozy sauce dripping off the pan, down the rack, and into the oven below. There was also smoke and a funny smell.
“Huh,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like that.”
“I think I must have done something wrong,” Steve explains. “The crust recipe said to add a cup of water, but it didn’t say what size cup.” He fishes a 64 ounce tumbler out of the sink.
Judging by the bubbling crud all over the inside of my oven, he really had added 8 times the amount of water he was supposed to.
To this day, a decade later, my husband swears it was a joke. He swears that Steve had known all along and had done all this to mess with me. We shall never know.
But I know that my husband knew the word was grapefruit.
Didn’t he?
No related posts.
