Apple

Nowhere NEAR finished...

   There are really only two ways to eat an apple. Now, I'm talking about apples as a snack only because, of course, there are many ways to cook and eat apples and they are all delicious. For my purposes today, I am talking about heading out to the kitchen because you've got a food hankering, taking a look around, and then deciding that an apple would be a healthy choice.
   At this point you have two basic options---you can cut up the apple into slices or you can simply grab the apple, wedge it into your mouth, and start tearing off chunks. 
   If you cut up the apple into slices and eat it, it's gone.
   If you decide to eat it as is, right out of your hand, it will last forever.
   And ever. And ever.
   You can never actually finish eating an apple when you eat it that way. You may think you've finished and you may set it aside and go back to what you're doing but then, maybe twenty minutes later, you're looking at that apple core again and you can see one tiny little bit of it still left. And if you can get at least one corner of a tooth anchored on to it, then you  still have an apple you can eat.
   You may look like a beaver or a raccoon while you're doing this, rolling around a little stump of a morsel with your tiny little paws, but you're still eating that apple.
   At some point you may feel like you're truly done with it and you'll set aside. You might even throw it out. If you don't throw it out, however, and just leave it where you were sitting, it's possible that it will still be there the next day. It will be all brown, for sure, and you'll think to yourself oops, I forgot to throw that out but then, looking at it, you'll think to yourself whaddya know, there's still a little left and you'll munch on it again. It's a renewable food source.

STILL some good, little bits!

   Have you ever been rooting around under the furniture or maybe behind an appliance, looking for something that rolled under there and you find an old apple core, fermenting? And have you thought to yourself hmmm, if I just wiped off the dust bunny I could pry off one more bite? Sure you have. And, if you're like me, you went ahead and did it. Because apples last forever.
   If you take an apple, peel the skin off, carve a little face onto it and then just set it aside somewhere where critters won't get at it, you will eventually have a little person. It will look like a wizened, tiny old man or woman but you will be able to dress it up, put miniature spectacles on it, maybe a little cap or bonnet, and you will have a small version of a human being. And this human being will last longer than you're going to because apples last forever.
   There are places in the world where famine is a perpetual problem. It has occurred to me that apples would be the solution. Why not airlift apples into these places? I'm not thinking tons and tons of apples. I'm thinking likely one bag would do.
   In retrospect, I wonder why there are other fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. You eat a carrot, it's gone. You eat an orange, it's gone. Same with celery, grapes, potatoes, squash, you name it, once you're done eating those other foods, they're gone. Not so with apples.

The Future

   I've heard that, in the event of a nuclear holocaust, the only livng thing able to survive will be cockroaches. I can envision a tiny cockroach supper table, with little cockroach kids and a cockroach dad sitting around it. The cockroach mom walks in and places a huge tray of food on the table and all the cockroach kids moan "Aww, mom, apples again...?!"