Fruit Salad

“So what’s your favourite fruit then?” I ask my son as he makes vomit noises during dessert despite half a gallon of cream to take the edge off. It has been a very long dinner, the light is fails as the chill rolls in.
“Chocolate pudding.”
“That’s not a fruit dummy it’s not even a proper food! Is it mom?” But I can’t get another word in edgeways as the more verbal exercise supremacy.
“There’s only one food group and it’s not a pyramid it’s shaped like a bean, a cocoa bean.” I turn to my silent son, the one who loathes fruit, all fruit, especially bananas, a mere whiff from fifty paces will make him gag, “what about you dear?”
“Nuffin.”
“What’s your favourite fruit?”
“Bats.”
“Fruit…… fruit to eat?”
“Oh…..er.…..maybe……pineapples.” It’s like extracting teeth to get him to say anything sometimes.
“Nonna……what about you? What’s your favourite fruit?”
“Me? I like anything…..everything….pasta is my favourite though.”
“FRUIT!” we all bellow in unison. The unison is surprising as it means that in one very rare occasion we are all on exactly the same page at the same time. Unfortunately, Nonna, unusually, is wearing her hearing aid, together with fully functioning batteries. I watch her reel with deadly feedback and blink, repeatedly, as she regains her composure, “oh, fruit you say? Well I like peaches best, whatever is in season really.” As an after thought, seconds later, when no-one is listening and the conversation has moved on to the subject of a fish called croissant, the French for fish which sounds like croissant but is really poisson, she adds, with an expression crippled with distaste, “but I do hate bananas,” and in a snap, my son who has only uttered 12 words since breakfast blurts, sotto voce, in a tone of dripping ice, “welcome to the club.”

Fruit Salad

http://sandwichedgenes.blogspot.com/2009/10/fruit-salad.html