Beware of Fruit Cocktail

With chicken you watch out for bones. With watermelon you watch out for seeds. With soup you watch out for hot. But fruit cocktail is the most dangerous. The reason is that the enemy does NOT meet you in the open. We know chicken has bones so we're careful and we learn to avoid them. You anticipate watermelon seeds in each bite so you know you can't chomp and gulp (unless you want watermelons growing in your tummy). And the steaming bowl of soup might as well have a flashing sign above it saying, "Caution: Contents are hot and will hurt you if you put them in your mouth!" But the fruit cocktail is sneaky. There are no warnings, and experience really doesn't help.

Looks good, doesn't it? Don't be fooled by appearances. A dangerous foe lies beneath the festive surface.

Do you know what I'm talking about? It's the surprise pieces of wood fragments that tend to gravitate toward the pears or peaches. You spoon some fruit juiciness into your mouth, chew, swallow, and all is well, but that all changes on spoonful #7. Your molars come to a violent halt and you have to decide whether to finger through the fruity slime in your mouth or just swallow a small hunk of wood and risk esophageal splinters.

Now do you know what I'm talking about? If you don't, you've been chowing on rich people fruit cocktail or something. This is something that has always bothered me. The wood chips are probably cores that slipped by the expungers and decided to crash the party. I'd say 50% of the time you could spot one before putting it in your mouth but this would require delicate examination of each piece of fruit. The other 50% are undetectable until your bicuspids suddenly become sawmills. Although they tend to hide in the peaches and pears, they occasionally stick to grapes and cherries. (Pineapples are safe.)

Lately I've been avoiding fruit cocktail. It's just not worth it.