A tribute to the cantaloupe I bought and let die on my counter

I saw you from across the produce section.

With all of the other ones like you. Your round family members and you all waiting together.

You don’t usually catch my eye due to the work it takes to distribute you in an edible form to my family and the ho-hum reaction they usually give me.

But on this day, you were on sale for 97 cents.

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So today, I hunched over the crate where you and your people huddled together. I squinted my eyes, knocked on many, squeezed a few and finally scooped you up into my arms.

Into my cart you went.

>>>Side note: Baby was sitting in this nifty nook for this grocery shopping occasion while toddler sat in this.

I paid 97 cents for you and I took you home.

“A day or two on the counter and it will be perfectly ripe,” I thought.

But a day or two passed and lasagna didn’t seem like a good dinner to serve you with.

And then you got pushed behind the bananas and apples and those seemed so much more appealing than you so many times.

A few more days passed.

I looked at you in the morning and thought, “It’s today or it’s never.”

But my husband got home from work late and the baby was extra fussy and the toddler was cranky and I hardly got dinner on the table. But I did get dinner on the table.

You, however, did not make it to the table. You sat there on the counter. The cutting board and the big knife stayed clean because I could not have handled one more dirty dish that night.

“I’ll just put it in the fridge until we’re ready to cut into it. Cantaloupe is better cold anyway,” I thought.

And you sat in there until a whole week had passed since I first brought you home.

I went grocery shopping again, and you had to surrender the precious real estate you were taking up in the refrigerator to the new food.

Back on the counter you went, soft now and slightly shriveled.

We didn’t want to eat you anymore, but we didn’t have the heart to throw you away.

And as you suffered a sad and slow death on my counter, the fruit flies showed up for your funeral.

I couldn’t have a cantaloupe-funeral-bugfest in my kitchen, so I took you outside and decided to gift you to the chicken coop.

I didn’t care to cut you open for them, assuming that’s what their beaks were for, but when I went back to check on you, you were alone in the corner. Ignored. Even the chickens weren’t interested in you.

So, dear cantaloupe, I’m sorry.

I’m sorry you spent your whole life being rejected by both humans and animals.

Cantaloupe, I failed you. I failed the farmer who nurtured you into existence, I failed the grocery store that fostered you, and I failed the 97 cents I spent on you.

So this one goes out to you, cantaloupe: a tribute to the mediocre musk melon that didn’t do a thing wrong in its short life but never really got its chance to live.

 

***Written in loving memory of the cantaloupe that I bought and let die on my counter. RIP***

 

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