This Scares Me

     Some of you, not many, have asked me what scares me the most. I hate horror films. Driving a one lane road in a two ton truck on the side of a mountain with a 3000 ft drop on one side kind of makes my spine tingle as does an IRS audit. Not taking out the trash can causes a bit of anxiety as well, fearing not so much the trash not being taken out but my wife's reaction to not taking it out. That will ruin your day.  I am most scared by one little word, apricot.
     I hate apricots and have had many sleepless nights with nightmares about them. They bring many unpleasant memories from my childhood. You just don't understand, I HATE APRICOTS.
     Let me explain.  When I was growing up we had an apricot tree in the back yard. To say it was a healthy tree would be an understatement. The tree bore fruit, boy did it bear fruit. We picked apricots off it and all at the same time.  Do you know what happens when apricots are over ripe?  So, the family each year undertook the Herculean task of picking the darn apricots--tons of them.
     What do you do with all those apricots, all ripening at the same time. As I said in my last post, you try to give them away to friends.  This lasts only a short while as your friends quickly disappear.  In most cases, they don't like apricots and they try to avoid you because they know you because they know that you are going to try to palm more apricots on them. By this time they have sat for awhile and I won't even go to what happens after they have gotten soft and mushy.
     The idea hits that maybe we should make apricot jam. I don't like apricot jam and never have. When I was young, if I were to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich it was made with apricot jam.  My mom always wondered why I would eat her PB&J sandwich made with apricot jam. After all, we had to use up all the jam that we made that season, let alone the twelve seasons before. I think after 50 years, I still have a jar of that ugly stuff from out tree laying around somewhere. Its probably well aged by now.
     Not only was I a picker, but I was the cleanup crew as well.  As the apricots we didn't pick off the tree ripened they would fall off the tree, mushy of course. I used to hate stepping on them.  You just couldn't help but not step  on them. There were still millions of them. How many can you eat and make jam out of.  Our grass in the back went right up to the tree so I had to mow under the tree. You can imagine the mess to the mower, not to mention squishing the ugly things. You would have to clean your shoes of an ugly orange goo.
     How many apricots can you eat.  I have had enough.

I can eat pineapple, watermelon, strawberries peaches and other fruits. I just can't stand apricots.