I Could Be Your Own Personal Fruit Picker

There’s a lot of things I can’t do.

I can’t help you pick out what will someday be a valuable Pez candy character. I can’t encourage you to continue to dump your money into that Bea Arthur Fan Club.

I can’t help you knit a life-size dog, eat six eggs all at once, or even write a song about your favorite finger — the pinky.

But there is one thing I am extremely qualified for. Something I have trained for throughout my entire existence. Something that will change your life forever. I can be your own personal fruit picker.

But don’t get me wrong. I will not accompany you on a bright-sunny afternoon to an orange grove or a banana patch or a grapefruit gorge or a mango mountain or a kiwi corner or any other outdoor fruit growing area and get up on a huge dangerous ladder and reach up with all my strength and pick a fruit for your tasting pleasure. This is not the kind of picking I have been trained for.

Alas, I will accompany you to an apple aisle or a canteloupe counter or a pear pile or a fig fridge or any other indoor market where fruit has already been picked and is there, waiting for humans (like you, with my assistance) to choose or lose. The mad fruit picking skillz that I have developed over the last few decades will help me help you, help me help you, help ME help YOU.

Do you like hollow fruits?

Fruits with character?

Fruits whose pits can be transformed into a garden of life?

Are you going on a date and you want to be different? You’ve given up on the flowers and the candy and the checks for undisclosed amounts of money? Have you decided in the absence of such traditional date gifts that you would prefer to offer up something unique — like a fruit?

This is where I come in.

Is she outgoing? Then we must pick her a plum. Is he an asshole but yet you still think you can change him for the better? Then a pack of cherry-tomatoes (which are, yes, technically fruits) should be right up his alley. Is this woman you’re meeting for the first time (read: blind date), blind? Then a bruised and battered banana is perfect (hell, she’ll never know).

Does your extended family always interrupt you when you’re speaking? Then, a bag of grapes is perfect! Is your girlfriend sick and tired of you always arriving late to pick her up? Then, an extremely-ripe pineapple is what to grab. Is he missing a leg? Pick up some dates.

There is rhyme.

There is reason.

But the secrets are mine.

For if the secrets that were mine were allowed to be yours then they’d really not be my own secrets anymore but really just a bunch of public knowledge about picking fruits which would then, in turn, cause me to no longer be so unique and which would cause the previously written text to be a huge moot point.

And I don’t like moot points.

So instead, I will continue to announce my ability to be your own personal (indoor) fruit picker and leave it at that. No ifs, ands, buts or whys.