Watermelon

Mr. Fixit and I have very different tastes in food. He would eat rice three times a day if he could. I would eat potatoes four times a day if I could. I like most vegetables if they’re cooked the way my grandmother cooked them. It took him several years to eat green stuff. He loves fruit; I could do without it completely. He eats bananas like I would eat chocolate. The smell of ripe bananas makes me gag. I don’t like watermelon; he loves it.

The other day he bought a small seedless one and cubed it. He brought it out to have a little snack and asked me if I wanted some. I replied with a quick, but firm, “No thanks.”

I decided when I was a little girl I didn’t like it. It’s not the flavor so much as it is a couple of other little things. For instance, I can remember going on Sunday picnics with Nanny and Granddaddy in the park. Of course, Nanny didn’t use paper plates and cups like everyone else. No, she packed her second best china, flatware, and glassware. No hamburgers or hot dogs either. The menu consisted of fried chicken, potato salad, bean salad, sliced tomatoes, sometimes macaroni salad,  (That’s macaroni, not pasta. If it had been called pasta, it probably would have been considered a foreign food.) Sometimes she brought along mac and cheese. There was always watermelon in a big tub of ice.

I learned very quickly that it wasn’t for me. We didn’t eat with a fork: it was sliced and held in the hands. The seeds weren’t picked out; you spit them out. I hated the juice running down my face and neck. I hated the juice running down my hands to my elbows. I hated that stickiness on a hot day. The worst part was getting those slimy black seeds in my mouth! Ugh! Disgusting I thought!  And spitting? Under normal circumstances, “little ladies” didn’t  spit. And I was a “little lady” with a lot of tomboy thrown in.

Then I finally reached the age of four or five when I learned I didn’t have to eat everything on my plate to save the poor, starving children somewhere in the world (I never have figured that one out yet. How could my eating turnip greens help the starving masses?) and I also realized that it wasn’t being disrespectful to say, “No thank you, Nanny, I don’t care for any.” That's when I ate my last watermelon slice. And I don’t think I have  missed it at all.

However, I wonder now if I had eaten watermelon and turnip greens, would world hunger have been alleviated?

Note 1: My younger brother didn’t like it either. He said the seeds looked like bugs.

Note 2: I do like cantaloupe. Nanny served it in bite size pieces  we ate with forks.