Pears

There was a lady in Buy Low Foods today at the pear bins with her parents and her little daughter. I was getting pears too. They were very ripe pears. Just the way I like them. Just the way my kids like them. Who wants a crunchy pear? One that hurts your gums when you bite into it. Yuck!
This woman's father looked at the pears, grabbed one, looked it over, and said with a smug look,"They're bruised." He was an elderly gentleman who probably had some experience with fruit. He wasn't dressed in khaki's and a polo. He was wearing jeans and a plaid button up shirt and suspenders if I remember correctly. Maybe he grew up in Utah and had his own garden every year from his childhood. Maybe when he looked at the pears, he only looked at them to see if they were worth canning. Do you really want to can overripe pears? Don't ask me, I don't know much about canning. Anyway, the woman responded with a firm,"I don't care." Then she continued to fill her bags with pears. They were going for 3 lbs. for a dollar. After that her mother and father began to help her select the best pears. Even her daughter tried to help. They walked away with three or four bags full.
I've been thinking about that all day today. Why? I find it very fascinating that people are different. I find it even more fascinating that the same person can become a different person over time. There are so many fascinating things that I think that I sometimes have to get a piece of chocolate to calm myself down. Whether I have the chocolate or not, I think the combination of people with time and then you add the environment in which they grew up to it, the possibilities are endless. All sorts of people that think differently and are really really different.
The father didn't like ripe pears. Why? Doesn't he know that they're a great snack for young children? They're soft and sweet and because of that, your child might have a better outlook towards eating fruit. Wouldn't it be nice if when your child asked for a snack, they were thinking of something along the lines of an object that comes from a tree or out of the ground? Maybe the father didn't like ripe pears because his wife bought so many pears in the past and no one ate them so their kitchen was swarming with fruit flies. Gross! Sometimes that happens with our bananas.
The woman liked the pears. Maybe she liked the price. Maybe she didn't know that a bruise was bad on fruit. Maybe she figured she would peel them anyway and could get rid of the bruised section. That's what I did when I made pear sauce and dehydrated pears today. I just cut those bruises right off. Then Cinci came by every five minutes and grabbed a pear out of the bowl of cleaned pears and munched away.
That's why I took a very thorough shower this evening after tackling the bathroom that Cinci used. Poor kid. Perhaps I should have monitered how many he ate. I was just so happy that he was voluntarily eating a fruit. I wonder what Cinc's preference will be in 20 years at the pear bins when they're going 3 lbs. for a dollar?