Three peach lovers stood around the peach-pile at a supermarket. They circled the fruit, squeezing them and then only occasionally lifting them to their nose to take in a deep whiff at which point they would inevitably put the fruit back and look for riper prey.“Have you had these peaches?” One of the peach-lovers asked.
“From Colorado? They’re good.” The second chimed in.
“A bit expensive,” number one said. “But they’re out of the California peaches.”
“I was just in Colorado,” the third piped up. “The peaches there were fantastic.”
The three went back to selecting their fruit in silence for a moment. The first peacher sniffed a peach, and for a moment it looked like she would put it in her plastic bag, but she hesitated, sniffed again, and then put it back in the pile with a bit of disdain. “Not ripe,” she said.
“Didn’t think they had peaches in Colorado,” the second said.
The third nodded. “They grow good peaches up there, the Western slope.”
This was serious business, and another thirty seconds or so before any of them broke the silence of their work to talk.
“It’s just so hard,” the third stuttered, “because when you eat a bad peach.”
“Yeah,” the first peach lover said, “the peach, among all fruits, is the one that is most temperamental. When you eat a bad peach…”
The second peach-aficionado picked up the thread: “It is like you have lost your job. A good one.” But she just shook her head and, in a sudden impulse, put another peach in her plastic produce bag after only barely sniffing it.
“A good peach,” the third said, “then it’s like nothing else, you can’t believe it.”
And with that, they returned to their task.
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