Fruit

Jessica was in a supermarket looking at the fruit. What should I take? I don't want any of this. She circled around the aisle trying to find something that might look appealing. She knows she should be eating more fruit, but she's never liked any of it. Grapes? No, too many seeds. Grapefruit? No, too bitter. Kiwis? No, too sour, and I don't like the fuzz on them. Why does a fruit have fuzz anyway? Oranges? Too orange. She took a pear in her hand and pondered it. Okay, I'll take a pear. Oh, but this one is bruised. She saw a brown spot about a centimeter in diameter on the yellow pear. She shuffled through the rest of the pear container and was happy with none of them. Then she saw the bananas. What am I, a monkey? Not to mention what it looks like when you eat one.

After spending her ten minutes at the fruit aisle, she gave up. Today would not be the day that she started eating fruit. She walked away, destructively angry at herself. Why am I like this? 'By chance', she stumbled upon the candy aisle. Might as well commit to the non-discipline. She took a couple of chocolate bars: Twix, Snickers, Kinder Bueno. She put them in the shopping basket with the rest of the things. Then she passed a freezer with ice cream. Ah, I'll take one for the ride home.

As she was walking towards the register, a door that said "STAFF ONLY" opened slightly a few meters in front of her. A girl pushed her head out and said "Psst, over here!", and gestured to Jessica with her hand. "Who, me?", Jessica felt as though she stumbled upon a side quest in a video game. "Yes, you, come in, I wanna show you something", the girl insisted, "Come on, before my boss sees". Jessica turned her head left and right, and saw a fat moustached man giving instructions to a kneeling employee a few aisles down. What could she want? Is she in trouble? Sneakily, she went through the door with her basket in her hands.

Inside, she found herself in what seemed to be the staff's break room. There was no one there except the girl who called her in. There was a coffee table in the middle with some chairs around it and half-drunk coffees in paper cups. Extra uniforms hanging all around. "What's going on? Why did you invite me here?", Jessica asked, still perplexed. The girl offered her her hand and said: "I'm Linda, by the way". "Jessica", said Jessica, a tone of confusion in her voice. Linda was a small twenty-something girl, blonde with freckles. She had a sort of glint in her eye. "It's nothing, I just wanted somebody to drink some coffee with, that's all", Linda said, "I like meeting new people, and I like slacking off". That gave Jessica a chuckle. "Come on, take a seat, do you like it with milk or sugar?", Linda asked. "Both, please", Jessica answered, and she sat down to the table. "I saw you looking at the fruit for some time, what's the story there?", Linda was curious. "Ha, ha, you saw that, did you? Oh, it's nothing, it's kinda weird actually. Recently I realised that I never eat fruit because as I child i disliked it. I hated the way people ate apples and it was all messy with the apple's juices and saliva mixed up, and the white stuff on the oranges, and the damn fuzz on kiwis! What is up with that? Why does a fruit have fuzz? Fuzz is for animals". That made Linda snort her coffee. "Oh my god, I like that so much. You are so out of your mind, I love it", she could not stop laughing. Jessica gave a chuckle and a smile. "Yeah, I guess I am a bit nuts. But that's what I was coming to. I realise I'm nuts and I was trying to make myself sane. These are childhood representations of fruit that I've been carrying all my life, it's not justified, it has to go. How can I ever hope to become a better person if I let my childhood presumptions dictate how I live, and the fruit is just the first step. It's just fruit, everybody eats it. It's good for you. I need to get over it.", Jessica told her. Linda saw that there was no fruit in Jessica's basket. She gestured towards it with her head. "So, what happened?", she asked her. "I was weak today. A reason here, a justification there, and no fruit was right for me. Mind you, one of the reasons was that an orange is too orange", Jessica said, chuckling at her own stupidity, while Linda was dying from good-natured laughter. Jessica took the Twix bar from the basket, opened it, and gave one piece to Linda. "Here", she said, as Linda came down from laughing.

As the girls were enjoying themselves, sipping coffee, eating Jessica's candy, the door suddenly opened widely. A fat moustached man stepped in, his face angry. His eyebrows leaning towards the center of his nose. "Linda! I thought I told you to rearrange the fruit aisle! Bring in some new pears... And who is this?", he demanded. "Oh this is my new friend, Jessica. We were just talking about fruit, what a coincidence", Linda told her boss, relaxed. "I hate fru-", Jessica tried to say timidly, but the boss interrupted her. "I don't care what you hate. You don't work here. Linda, this is the last time you've "made friends" with a random costumer. I'm drawing the line here and now. It's either her or me". Linda looked at Jessica, then at her boss. "Screw the fruit, rearrange it yourself. Jessica, let's go". She handed him her uniform, and they left.

Jessica's basket got left behind. The ice cream thawed in that sad room. It was not thrown away, as that would come out of the employees' pay. Instead, one of them put it back in the freezer at the end of the workday, all deformed.