Saturday, October 11, 2008 Nuts without walls By Ober Khok Sira-sira store
I WAS watching the commercials on television — wondering how much money a 30-second spot would pour into the coffers of a network, and how much an ad actor earns — when my nephew Pannon sidled up to me. This was ominous.
“Uncle, what’s the taste of melamine?”
Melamine has lately become a buzz-word in my home, the butt of jokes that I would rather not share here for fear some non-milk products might feel alluded to and I might get a warrant of arrest for libel.
“You wouldn’t want to taste it,” I told him. “Why do you ask?”
It was hard concentrating on GMA 7’s Mike “Di-kita-tatantanan” Enriquez as he delivered the evening news.
“Lola Blitte said that when she was young, milk came from cows and nothing was added to it.”
You know, I was right about suggesting that we all raise our own cows so we can have real fresh milk straight from the source.
Or maybe the government can make cow-raising a barangay project so residents can procure their daily milk rations, of course, for a minor fee, like grass for the cow.
“Uncle, what is spring cleaning?” Pannon suddenly shifted his line of interrogation.
I froze like an orange popsicle. Experience told me that it would be a long night of “why” and “what” questions that can’t be silenced with a one-word answer, and I don’t mean “shut up.” The boy might only be three-feet high but his curiosity reaches the heavens.
“OK, spring cleaning is one day in spring time set aside for cleaning a house; normally the word is used in countries that have winter. The cleaning really happens in spring.”
“So you can’t do spring cleaning in Cebu, uncle.”
“Why?”
“We don’t have spring, and yet you told grandpa yesterday that you and he need to help grandma do some spring cleaning.”
By now I surrendered Mike Enriquez to my channel-surfing niece. “It’s a term now being used when someone thoroughly cleans every part of the house.”
Although he didn’t look convinced, he also seemed bored with the subject.
I stood up to grab a sandwich and Pannon followed me to the kitchen. As I spread pineapple jam and peanut butter on wheat bread for the two of us, he cleared his throat.
“Is a pineapple an apple or a pine?”
In my mind I banged my head on the wall for not taking my Botany classes seriously. The only reason I didn’t drop it was my seatmate, a beautiful girl with dark eyes.
“It’s a — let me see. Well, it’s like walnuts. It has nuts, shells but no walls; like coconuts don’t have cocoa; grapefruits are not grapes; so pineapples are neither apples nor pines.”
“So what are they?”
This was the job for Super Google. I told Pannon pineapples belong to the bromeliad family and because the fruits look like pine cones, people called them that. The shape probably reminded them of apples.
The word “apple” refers to other fruits, too, like tomatoes are love apples, and there’s even apple of the eye. It’s really a multi-fruit.
“What’s a multi-fruit?”
Me and my big mouth got me in trouble. I lied.
“No, what I meant was it’s a multi-nutritious fruit. Slip of the tongue, Pannon.”
By this time, Mike Enriquez had become just another name. Maybe he’s even my creditor.
“Why then is a grapefruit called that way when they aren’t grapes?”
I gritted my teeth. “I think it’s because they look like grapes from afar?”
“And nearby, what do they look like?
“Coconuts?”
Pannon laughed. “Yeah, cool. Are they really nuts?”
“No, it belongs to the big palm family.”
“But why are they called nuts then?”
“I think because the fruit has a hard shell like a walnut. When it is cracked open, it looks like a nut.”
“It’s funny how you adults talk, uncle. I don’t want to grow up ever.”
“Why?”
“Because now I’m just a boy free to run in our yard. I don’t know what I’ll be when I grow up or what other people will call me.”
