almost okay

Dear Lyzako,

As I sat beneath a tree yesterday eating my bagged lunch, I was overtaken by a childhood memory, one that involved joy and the experience of carefree living under the late Summer sun and the blue sky and the puffy white clouds (much like those you see in the opening credits of 'The Simpsons'). For a brief moment the decades melted away as I sat there listening to the chirps of the sparrows and the insistent shrieks of crows as they flew from tree to tree above me. If not altogether humorous, the memory seems worth relating, given the recent difficulties I've experienced in my adult life.

After my main course of turkey salami, Asiago cheese and Romaine lettuce on toasted multi-grain bread, I pulled from my bag a plum the size of a toddler's heart and sank my teeth into its juicy flesh. As the sweet nectar of my humble dessert filled my mouth it simultaneously ran over my chin and into my beard, streamed down my fingers and dripped onto the front of my tee shirt leaving sticky stains.

Suddenly I saw myself as an eight-year-old...

I was sitting in the crook of a low branch in one of Papaw's plum trees, just outside of Corbin, Kentucky, surrounded by the Daniel Boone National Forest and only a mile or so away from the original Sanders Restaurant where the Colonel himself first served up his patented fried chicken recipe complete with all eleven herbs and spices. As I plucked the succulent purple fruits right from the limb and ate my fill, I was at the same time using the mushy, overripe ones to pelt my brother who had taken up a similar position in his own tree nearby, laughing, eating and returning my fire at will. After devouring the flesh of the fruits and sucking every scrap of it from the almond-shaped stones at the centers, we discovered yet another form of makeshift ammo, and began gleefully spitting the stones at each other as General Richie and I engaged forces in the historic Second Battle of the Plum War of 1966.

As I recall we were scolded only mildly at the time... told to get down from the trees, stop eating the plums, stop throwing them, etc... all things that an adult would deem bad behavior, but at the same time the very stuff that makes a child's life worth living.

The scene flashed before me in an instant, held my thoughts until I'd finished dessert and was rolling the naked stone around in my mouth. Instead of spitting it in the bag as I normally would, I felt a sudden urge to go for distance, so I stood up in order to maximize the trajectory. I caught myself laughing a bit on the inhale, feeling silly about what I was doing, got a little distracted and nearly sucked the thing down my windpipe. Sputtering and bug-eyed I spat it out as quickly as possible knowing there wasn't anyone in the immediate area to administer the Heimlich maneuver should I foolishly insist on choking myself. When I did so, the sharp edge on one side of the pit actually sliced a tiny cut in my tongue, the metallic taste of blood erasing all memory of the sweetness of the fruit. My eyes streamed with tears and I coughed for some time before recovering fully and laughing out loud until I couldn't breathe.

It was the best laugh I'd had in ages. Come to think of it, it might have been the best laugh I've had since 1966.

Cheers and Regards!
Marty Sherman