Melon-choly

So there he was, sitting in a big wooden box at Giant. I've always been a fan of the cantaloupe, but very rarely buy them because they take so much effort to eat. You have to cut them up, get rid of the seeds, and then peel that rind crap off them. But this particular cantaloupe was quite enticing. He had a lovely rindy glow and a cute little cantaloupe belly button where he was cut from the vine (or do they grow on trees? I've never seen a cantaloupe in the wild). I put him in my basket.

When I got him home I decided to put him in my colander which I bought at Nordstrom's for $40, which seemed expensive for a colander, except that this was an indestructible stainless steel colander that I purchased, to be frank, more for its architectural beauty and design than for the actual use of it, since I have no need for kitchen items because I don't like it in that room. Anyway, as colanders go, this was park avenue. I stuck him in his little luxury digs and put him on the second shelf in my refrigerator and said believe me honey, we'll be seeing you real soon.
After a few days he seemed ripe enough but I just couldn't bring myself to puncture his fat little ass and scrape out his insides. I'll just wait for a week and then deal with it I told myself. He looked a little upset when I would pull out the cherries or bottled water but he said nothing. If my refrigerator was the nativity scene this melon was the baby fucking jesus in his little shiny stall so who was he to complain about a good thing.

A week turned into a week and a half. His little belly button turned blacker and blacker. I found that, when rummaging around in the refrigerator, I couldn't bring myself to make eye contact with him. He became more and more withdrawn and started developing a dent. I decided he might be suffering from some kind of post tramatic tree or vine separation syndrome and consulted my cookbook for advice. I only have one cookbook, which is the betty crocker cookbook, which is a good cookbook except for the pages on the left side, which are burned because I left it sitting too close to the burner on my gas stove one day when I was trying to boil water for some two year old broccoli that I found in my freezer and subsequently ate and then almost died from because apparently, frozen vegetables go bad. This was never mentioned in my cookbook.

But there was no advice for my melon in the pages, at least not in the remaining pages. Of course the fruit section was one of the sections burned and the only parts left of that section contained something about lemon zest. I don't know what that is, and perhaps, in hindsight, I should have researched it to find out, as "zest" seems to imply some kind of life sustaining quality, but I was lazy.

Entering the end of week two I went on vacation for three days. When I returned and opened the refrigerator I found a shocking surprise. The melon had somehow detonated itself. And he didn't go alone. He turned my whole refrigerator into a stinking world of slime, especially the cokes on the third shelf which were covered in a gelatinous supparation of efflorescent ooze. I pulled out my colander and found him rotted in a pile of his own putrid excretions like he was some kind of melon elvis that hadn't left the building, and pieces of him had leaked every where including on the grey poupon.

I often wonder, is there anything I could have done? All the signs were there that he was getting more and more depressed. I was too self-centered to care how bad he was until it was too late. And all the money in the world for a better colander wouldn't have made a difference I think. Oh well, you always hurt the ones you love.

...bring on the cherries!