Wednesday, August 5, 2009

The cursing of the seeds

A perfect world would be a world sans papaya seeds. I am fond enough of the fruit. I have nothing against papaya trees, you understand, long may they grow and greenly prosper. I would, however, prefer that Mr. and Mrs P. Tree manage to make their gorgeous babies without the seeds.

I find that I cannot adequately describe my feelings for papaya seeds. Words fail me. However, smoke signals fail me more, so I will manfully make do with words. Papaya seeds fill me with deep disgust. My reaction to the black mass of them clinging glutinously together is visceral. Every fibre of my being revolts against the abomination of their existence. I would rather embrace, and lovingly at that, the slimiest, wartiest, most tentacle prone creature from the very worst alien movie of your choice than have to gaze upon papaya seeds. I could run on and on. I'll spare you though. The long and the short of it, neatly summarized for those of us who are slower on the uptake than the rest, is that I dislike papaya seeds a tad more than your average Joe.

What provoked this spew of venom, you ask? I was ambushed by the seeds. Being a reasonable person, I came to terms with the fact that though I find said seeds repulsive and nauseating, they probably do not deserve immediate extinction. It takes all kinds. All I asked was that we keep to our own corners, the seeds and I. Half the earth for me, the rest of the planet for them to gad about in, doing whatever distasteful thing it is that papaya seeds do in their spare time. I bought seedless papayas and raised a glass to their happy sterility. This happy state of co-existence came to a grinding halt last week when I slit open the fruit and was greeted by multitudes of the enemy, smugly, stomach-churningly, foully grinning back at me. A dastardly act. If it's a fight they want, we'll give them a fight. A call goes out to all good men to come to the aid of the party. Etc.

It turned out though, that having grimaced and delivered the seeds into the dustbin, repeating the mantra of yuck all the while, I was hard pressed to actually draw up war plans. My army was surprisingly tiny. And I make an excellent general but a surprisingly poor grunt. So I settled for this rant instead. May they know no happiness in this world or the next.

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