the cantaloupe
A long time ago, when my mother and father had just met in their early
twenties, (my mother married my father in 1978), my dad thought it
would be a great idea to take my mom to see some theatrical re-release
of Gone With the Wind featuring Clark I don't give a damn Gable.
father in front of the theater. My dad was egregiously 10 minutes
late, and when he arrived he was smiling and carrying a knapsack. The
contents would soon be revealed shortly after. Sometime during the film, I am guessing between the 150th - 175th
minute, my father reaches down and begins rifling through this
knapsack that he brought with him while making a gigantic ruckus.
According to my mother this goes on for at least 3 minutes. My father then pulls out a cantaloupe from the bag, fresh and uncut,
the size of a small 5 or 6 lb bowling ball. He then also brandishes a
knife, and not just any knife, but a large serrated knife used to flay
meats and cut through bone. I don't know how my dad would think this
is OK. In public. In the dark. And with a young woman he barely knows. He also didn't bring a cutting board, but he did bring a plastic bag,
for rinds and seeds. He was about to position the melon between his
thighs for a nice cut down the middle when my mother just looked at
him and glared. At this point my Dad jumped in to defend himself, because cantaloupes
were very rare at that time in asia, he really wanted to impress my
mother by obtaining this fruit. His plan was to cut the melon in
half, spoon out the seeds and hand one half to my mother to enjoy
while he ate the other half. I thought it was a most excellent
gesture in theory, but very very poorly executed. My mother equally
agreed, and said that, to give my father credit, had he ignored my
mom's fiery eyes of disapproval, and proceeded to cut the cantaloupe
then and there in the theater, my sister and I would have never been
born and we wouldn't be a family. Of all things, I would've never imagined a cantaloupe to be an
x-factor in deciding my life.
