| AN APPLE A DAYby Richard MasonYes, with an apple a day you can improve your health. It can regulate the bowels. It can save your life. I found that out the hard way as I walked home from a nightclub and was confronted by some tough young pukes. They were spoiling for a fight and I was itching to get home with my teeth still intact. Then I remembered I had a couple of apples in my coat pockets. I always take apples with me wherever I go because it's a great way to start conversations. You hand someone an apple and you have a new friend. You can sure learn a lot about life and people when you give them an apple. Waiting for the bus, there's always someone there who's hungry. Give them an apple and they give you the world.
This night I knew I could use the apples for a whole other reason. I took one out of my right pocket and chucked it like a major league pitcher right in the toughest one's forehead. Blort! He went down like a ton of bricks. I had one apple left, but there were three people left. I figured I would take it out and hold the apple in a threatening manner. Heck, maybe that might just fool them. Saved by fruit.
Two of the young toughs came after me. I had no choice but to wind up and hurl the apple for all its worth, warp speed man. Zonk! I got one of the others and put him out like a light. Seeing their buddies on the pavement, the two left standing ran away. The first one fell head first into a dumpster. He knocked himself for a loop, but he still had enough sense to stagger away with his buddy already disappearing into the trees across the street.
That's pretty much all there is to my story. An apple a day, man, an apple a day. I know apples saved my life that night and to this day, I still won't go anywhere without a couple of apples in each pocket.
What I failed to mention in the above scenario is that I urinated on the two punks who'd been knocked out by apple power. I guess you can say I was marking my territory. It's a little something I like to do, mark my territory. I almost got busted once for public exposure because I was marking a hedge in a girl's yard and the cops came by.
A few weeks later I noticed a car following me when I was out and about buying groceries and what not. Right away I figured it was those young punks, come to settle the score. The way I see it, they was a bunch of cry baby spoil sports. They tried to gang up on me and I let fly with my amazing power of the fast ball. Big deal. I was defending myself. Mess with me and you'll get apple bonked. I like throwing things. Don't give me an excuse. A little hobby of mine, throwing things, building up my pitching arm, practicing to be a major league pitcher even though there's no chance in hell of that happening. I'm too old and way too fat. Some people like to do push ups, or sit ups, me, I like to throw a good fast ball. At the Pitch and Put they got a radar thingy that clocks your pitches. I can get it up to 100 MPH most days.
I saw the old Chevy three times before they finally made their move. Now, I was scared. I'll admit that. I was scared. I didn't know what they'd do. Gangs had guns, .357 Magnums, machine guns, even grenades. They had knives, cricket bats, broken bottles, machetes. They were nobody you wanted after you. But there you go, I had to pee on two of them and that's just asking for it. Whatever happened, I knew I probably deserved it.
They pulled up along side me. Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw guns coming out from inside. I had no time to think, I threw two apples, hitting two chumps and dove behind the merry-go-round. I could hear the bullets pelting all around me. I got off one more apple that was shot to pieces inches away from my attackers, juicy organic shrapnel spraying their eyes had them diving back inside the car, which proceeded to drive off at a high rate of speed.
I never saw those young punks ever again. I like to think they were busted a few blocks down the street and were sent straight to prison on a full house of those three strike deals they got going. One time in the park someone beaned me with an orange as hard as anybody has a right to throw, Roger Clemens hard on the back of my head. It was a run-by fruiting, something I could appreciate. I think my brain splashed forward in there and I got a concussion. I was really stupid and forgetful for three days.
Eventually I got up the stones to go back to the park, but I did not see anything out of the ordinary, no one throwing fresh fruit, nothing. Someone had hit me with that orange and I was going to give them a good talking to, but I guessed I'd have to wait.
I went back several more times, but I never encountered anyone throwing fruit. Then one day I noticed a slightly attractive woman with an orange in her hand. She was sitting on a bench eating a sack lunch, so at first I didn't think too much of it. Then as an older couple walked by, she took the orange and threw it at the man, who was walking a little slower than the woman, who was dressed in jogging clothes and she had ankle weights on each ankle. The man nearly fell over from the impact. It was at this time that a handful of teenagers ran through, giving the man ample suspects for the run-by fruiting. Slowly, I made my way to through the crusty snow to the woman sitting on the bench. From the side I could tell she had a wicked grin, no doubt pleased with her aim. "Ah hem." I pretended to clear my throat.
"You some kind of perv?" she asked.
"No. I couldn't help but notice you threw an orange at that old man. That was gutsy. It reminds me that I'd been smacked with an orange about a week ago. I was walking by the big fountain and zap! Right in the back of the head. Same place you just hit that old man."
"Yeah, what of it? Someone hit you with an orange. Whoopie."
I could tell right away I did not like this woman. I turned to walk away, my left hand in my coat pocket, fondling an apple. When I got a few yards away, near the wildlife shrubbery part, I turned and threw the apple. I hit the back of the bench, unusual for me because I am normally a great shot. I can swing a car tire back and forth on a rope and get an apple through the hole without even trying. I'm that good. Still, I hit the bench just below the woman's head. She turned, but I was already gone.
From then on life went down hill. I'd go for a walk at the park, or to the mall, even down to the corner for a pack of smokes, and sure enough, an orange came out of nowhere and whapped me on the back of the head. Or an orange came flying past my head and hit something I was standing next to, like the but stop sign, or a for sale sign, or a telephone pole. One time I was in the record store looking at a rare Pavlov's Dog lp and in the reflection on the shrink wrap, I saw someone behind me. It looked like they were getting ready to throw something at me. I grabbed an apple out of my pocket and in one quick motion, I whirled around and beaned the manager. Apparently he was just stretching and I'd mistook him for the female fruiter.
Mind you, I got in my fair share of cheap shots, too and it was thrilling, absolutely thrilling. I skulked around the park, looking for Orange Girl, cause that's what I called her, Orange Girl, and when I thought I saw her, I threw an apple as hard as I could. I hit the arm of her coat. I hit a tree by her, just inches from her head. I hit her bike. I hit her dog. I got in my fair share. Then one day I found myself with a few extra dollars in my pocket and so I thought I would take myself out for a burger. I went to a place called Hometown Burger. They have the best burgers in town. I decided to sit down and eat rather than take the food home. It always makes me feel like a big shot to sit down and eat in a restaurant, if you must know. And there she was, Orange Girl, my waitress. I could tell she recognized me. Jokingly, I asked if I could order an orange. Not much of a joke, really, but Orange Girl smile and said no. "They're not on the menu."
"Tanks be to God," I said, using my patented fake Arab accent. People think I'm an Arab anyway. I heard more than one person call me a rag head. I'm Pilipino, not an Arab! To make a long story short, she had a nice smile, so I asked for her phone number. I joked I was putting the apple cart in storage and that she had nothing to worry about. To my surprise, her shoulders seemed to loosen up, as if she suddenly relaxed and I didn't even know she was all that tense to begin with. What's more, she gave me her number and that's pretty much how I met my wife. Me, an apple thrower and her, an orange hurler. We were like two peas in a pod. We were meant to be. It took me a whole bag of apples and her, probably the same amount of oranges, to see what was there all along. We both had this strange silly quirk, we loved to hit people in the head with fruit.
The long and the short of it is that we started dating. Sometimes we reverted to our old ways and threw fruit at people. I tried bananas, but they don't have quite the same impact. Apples and oranges were naturally the best ammo. Plumbs were good because they splatted and sent juice every which way like a Kennedy head shot. I had to bail Tawnya out of jail once for assaulting a cop who appeared to have been hassling a hippie-looking guy.
Even today, some twenty-eight years later, I go out with an apple or two in each pocket. My wife has an orange ready for war. Sometimes we go to the park and play a kind of dodge ball with fruit, but mostly we just keep the fruit in our pockets waiting for the perfect moment. Sometimes it comes. Sometimes it doesn't.
My two boys, now teenagers, didn't fall far from the tree. Right from the beginning, when they were yea high, they imitated what they saw. I guess all kids to that. It's how they learn to walk and talk. My two boys saw mommy throwing an orange at the back of an old woman's head and copied it, starting out with grapes, then moving up to kiwis and tomatoes. They thought that was the way to act. Me and the wife, we sure didn't do much to tell them different. We thought it was cute.
Bobby and Raymond watched me throw apples at mailmen and telephone repairmen and nobody strangers in the park and thought that was how you solved problems. They watched me pitching through that swinging tire, saw me solving my problems with fruit and figured that was how you conducted yourself in the world. Despite the trips to the office to bail one or both of them out of another dire situation, I couldn't help feeling a bit proud at times. They didn't revert to fisticuffs between classes or at recess, they threw fruit. They knew how to throw something and instantly return to a "What, me?" sort of look that kept them out of trouble on many occasions. That was the whole thing behind fruiting people, you had to look innocent. That had them looking right past you to someone else. You make good your escape, you go home and have a cola, or in my case, a rum and cola, cheap cola, Shasta cola, and you're day ends up just ducky.
When my boys got a bit older, like eight or nine years old, they were twins, you see, they threw baseballs through the tire swing. When they were proficient at that, they swung the tire and it was like starting all over from the beginning for awhile. If there's one thing I can say about my boys, they both have great pitching arms. I meant to take them to the Pitch and Putt to clock their throwing speed, but I never got around to it. I'd guess they throw 80 or 90 mph, maybe faster. It hurts to catch a ball that either one of them throws, even with a thick leather ball glove. Two or three catches and I need to get ice because my hand has swollen up like a man's face after a Granny Smith attack.
Like me, my kids never left home without an apple or a few Clementines. They knew someone would try to push them around on the playground and it was easier to wait for a stolen moment to hurl their fruity revenge. My only regret in not speaking up and explaining to my boys that there was a better way, was when one of them thought of freezing fruit solid to make them more painful. A frozen kiwi in the eye would give you a black eye and a beat red eyeball. Nasty to look at, funny when you did it to someone who deserved it.
Unlike me, Bob and Ray took to baseball and excelled as pitchers by their sophomore year of high school. It was at this time they stopped throwing fruit at people, while me and the house frau, we still like to go out and toss an apple from time to time.
I guess the kids outgrew fruiting people, or so we thought. Two years into college Bob and Ray, star members of the school's winning baseball team, and no stories, not a one about whacking some poor dumb schmuck with an apple or a pear. The boys won an award for coming up with a new pitch, one that continues to confuse and confound batters to this day. That's a proud period in my life. I should include my spousal unit, she was proud too. We were both out of this world when we'd heard about the new pitch. Now every time we watch a MLB game, someone uses that pitch and the announcer tells everybody who came up with it. It's called the Bob and Ray slider.
Then one Thanksgiving weekend they confessed to having started something, some kind of movement that had half the school throwing apples at the teachers, their cars, windows, other students, generally making a filthy mess out of the campus. It got written up as a festival, a good thing, something like that big tomato fight in Spain every year, if anyone knows what I'm talking about.
When my wife asked them about it, Bob and Ray confessed rather sheepishly that the whole thing had been a tribute to us. Well, this made me a proud papa, no doubt there. We all had apple pie from the apples I grew in the back and it couldn't have been a better day until a census taker came to the door with one too many questions. Ray smiled at the census taker before asking him to leave the property. When the man was just about to turn at the corner, three houses down, both Bob and Ray let fly with some of the apples from the back yard. Blort! Blat! Bloffo! The census taker was sent packing and in pain. The end.
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