Forbidden Fruit

If God wanted the forbidden fruit to remain forbidden, he would've made it a pomegranate.

The Almighty seriously dropped the ball on that one. Eve would've taken one look at that pomegranate and said, "Screw this! Adam, let's go play tennis."

As an American, I don't want to do anything that requires a lot of work, is confusing, will in any way get me dirty, or takes more than three steps to complete. So, when I picked up a couple pomegranates at the grocery today, I was reassured by the posted instructions that read, "1.) Score. 2.) Soak. 3.) Separate."

Alliterative and simple! I thought to myself excitedly.

Feverish in my anticipation for my trendy new snack, I barely noticed that on the reverse side of the sign there were the same directions in French.

Well, if the French can do it..., I thought. Man, I'm funny. Why am I always alone when I think funny things? Probably because you ask yourself rhetorical questions and laugh at your own jokes. Ah, touche.

At home, I found myself patiently (ok, not at all patiently) following the now memorized pomegranate dismantling instructions. Only, my pomegranate didn't look like the one on the sign. Mine wasn't neatly scored, and the pomegranate corpuscles (or whatever the hell they are, I like to call them corpuscles) were certainly not assembling themselves cooperatively into the strainer.

Could I have possibly been mislead by the marking people of the pomegranate? Why would they do that? Are they French? Am I French for trying to eat a pomegranate? Actually, I think I am a little French. Or is it German? I've always wanted to learn French or German Why the hell did I take all those years of Spanish in high school? That was a waste. I don't even remember it. I wonder how you say "pomegranate" in Spanish. Probably pomegranito or something. Haha, that's funny too! I should really start writing this stuff down. I wonder how things are going with my pomegranate.

Crap.

My kitchen looked like a crime scene from one of those crime scene investigation shows. Like CSI, maybe. All that was missing was David Caruso tilting his birdlike head, removing his sunglasses and saying, "No lieutenant, this was more than just an attempt at a healthy snack: this was murder."

My hands, forearm, t-shirt, face, and counter top were all covered in sticky, blood-colored spatter. I cursed myself and Mother Nature, but finally resigned myself to the realization that my pomegranate was gone. There was nothing left to do but to pick up the pieces, and try to move on.