On Maligning the Poor Pear

The pear gets a bum rap in Randy’s latest column about the fruit and all of its dire consequences. Read the rest of the story…

public domain image – Bing seaarch

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

On Maligning the Poor Pear

The pear is a horrible fruit.
Have you ever stopped to consider the case against the pear?

First of all, the skin turns black way too quickly. The fruit has absolutely no sense of social timing.

You know this when you go to pick it up and it is all soft and mushy.

How many times have all of us cried out, disgustedly, “Yeeach” as the pulp squished through our fingers even as we went to pick it up?

Obviously, the pear is a fruit that does not last long.

But eat it too soon, and it’s hard and tasteless. We bite, try to chew, and spit out the hard-as-bark piece that we just bit off into a napkin or onto the side of our plates. Most likely, we’ll rush over to the garbage can and spit it out there, shaking our heads side-to-side, and uttering, “Bleeech.”

Then we proceed to throw out the whole fruit. What a waste.

So, what do we do?

We let the rest of the pears we just bought ripen in order to get its full rich flavor and unique texture.

But all too often, we forget to check it, and when we go back to the fruit, it’s, as I said, black as can be and mushy.

I don’t know about you, although I suspect that we all do it, we quickly and wrongly and stupidly think to ourselves, well, maybe it’s still good. That part doesn’t look that bad, maybe I’ll bite there, and down our mouths go, eyes closed, hoping to taste the good side of the pear and savor those sweet rewards.

But, Oooochhh! and Yuck. We run again to spit it out. Oh hell, where’s the garbage can? A napkin? Who has a napkin? We cry out. Anything! I’m spitting it on to your plate, honey. Sorry, I don’t care. Sorry.

We hope against hope. But the pear will almost always disappoint.

And even at its tastiest, it is usually grainy.

It is the texture, at least for me, of baby food, ready to be strained and shmooshed and sucked and pushed around and between teeth and cheeks and tongue and tonsils, with teeny flakes that feel like bits of sand in the middle of all that gushy stuff, and float around in there as if your mouth was a small jar of baby food – and now, swallow hard, open up, and get ready for the next mouthful which might taste like Gerber’s mashed apricots or, who knows, even carrots or worse.

Barf. And another run to the garbage can or some other place to spit fast.

And the shape! If a pear was a person (notice I did not write woman), you wouldn’t be caught dead with a someone who had a shape like that! No offense if you do have a shape like that.

Think about how it looks and fits in your hand. It’s like a grenade. Just bite off that little hard stem that they always leave at the top of the pear and voila!

Fling it at your enemy, cover your ears, and imagine it exploding.

The peerless grenade.

So there you have it. The case against the pear. It is all so ap-pear-ant when you stop and examine all the facts.

Friends, Romans, and countrymen – do not lend me your pears!

Randy Mazie

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