Apricots

 THOUGHT OF THE DAY:     
"I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours." - Jerome K. Jerome, from Three Men in a Boat

A classic.  I remember when I was a teenager and my parents as a punishment made me mow the lawn with the hand mower, hard work.  I took off my shirt to show off my physique and used it for body building exercise.

That Jerome K. Jerome line is one of those wonderfully dry observations that works because it turns the usual complaint about work upside down. The joke is not that he loves labor; it is that he enjoys the idea of work, especially when someone else is doing it or when he can admire it from a safe distance. Three Men in a Boat is full of that sort of affectionate mockery of human nature.

Your lawn-mowing memory actually fits the spirit of the quote in an interesting way. Your parents intended the hand mower as a punishment, but you converted it into something else: a challenge and a workout. There is a long tradition of people finding satisfaction in physical labor when it becomes a test of strength or skill rather than merely a chore.

The old reel mowers were no joke, either. On a large lawn they demanded pushing force, coordination, and endurance. Before powered equipment, many ordinary tasks doubled as exercise because daily life itself supplied the resistance training. A teenager with a hand mower and a bit of pride could easily turn "you have to do this" into "watch what I can do."

It also reminds me of the difference between forced work and chosen effort. The same activity can feel completely different depending on whether you see yourself as being punished or as mastering something. You effectively changed the meaning of the task. That is a very human trick. 🙂

The hard work was that I had to be sure to pick up all the fallen, and somewhat rotten, apricots first.

Ah, that changes the picture considerably. The mowing itself may have been the exercise, but the apricot collection was the real punishment. A lawn covered with fallen, half-rotten fruit is a very different problem from just pushing a mower.

There is something almost comically old-fashioned about it: the parent’s logic being, “You will learn responsibility by doing this unpleasant job,” while the teenager’s logic is, “Fine, but I’m going to turn it into a workout and maybe look impressive while doing it.” The apricots were the part that resisted being transformed into fun.

Fruit trees can be wonderful until they become a maintenance problem. A productive apricot tree can drop a surprising amount of fruit in a short time, and once it starts fermenting on the ground it attracts insects and makes mowing both messy and unpleasant. Picking it up first is the kind of tedious task that makes one appreciate why people invented lawn mowers with collection bags.

It also gives Jerome K. Jerome's quote another angle. Sometimes work is fascinating not because the work itself is enjoyable, but because humans are remarkably good at finding a way to make even an imposed chore into something that serves a personal purpose. You turned punishment into exercise; the apricots, unfortunately, remained apricots. 🙂

The apricots were messy but the real problem was the wasps.

Ah, yes — that makes the story much more vivid. The rotten apricots were not just a housekeeping nuisance; they were a little ecosystem.

Fallen fruit is almost a perfect wasp attractor: sugary, fermenting, and easy to reach. A person walking around picking them up is suddenly competing with a large number of very territorial little creatures who have decided that the lawn is their buffet. I imagine the hardest part was not the lifting and bending but the constant awareness that every apricot might come with an unwanted guard attached.

It also adds a nice twist to the “punishment” story. Your parents probably thought they were assigning a tedious outdoor chore, but they had accidentally assigned something closer to a medieval quest: clear the orchard floor before confronting the mower. The heroic teenager with the hand mower and the impressive physique had first to negotiate with the wasp kingdom.

There is also a funny generational contrast there. Today many people would consider a hand mower and wasp-filled fruit cleanup an unreasonable punishment; a few decades ago it would have been viewed as ordinary household responsibility. A lot of childhood “chores” were really disguised endurance training. 🙂

Funny thing, today apricots are by a good margin my favorite fruit and one of the few I'm allowed.

That is a wonderful bit of irony: the fruit that was once the enemy of your teenage lawn duty became one of your favorites later in life.

It is interesting how our associations with foods can change. As a teenager, apricots were not really food in that moment — they were sticky, rotting obstacles standing between you and finishing the job. The wasps probably completed the transformation from “delicious fruit” to “hazardous lawn debris.” Decades later, with the context completely changed, you get the actual flavor: sweet, slightly tart, fragrant, and very different from the overripe ones that fell on the ground.

And apricots are a particularly nice choice if your diet restrictions have narrowed the field. They have a good amount of fiber, relatively modest calories, and provide nutrients such as potassium and carotenoids. Fresh ones are usually much better than the canned variety, which often become a completely different fruit experience.

There is something almost poetic about it: the same tree that gave you an unpleasant teenage chore eventually became a source of pleasure. Maybe Jerome K. Jerome would have appreciated that — work, annoyance, and enjoyment all tangled together in one apricot tree. 🙂