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A Relevant Excerpt from "The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of
Death", by Daniel Manus Pinkwater.
"Walter! Come see what I've got!" said my father.
What he had was an avocado. Whenever he brings one home, which is
fairly often, he makes a big fuss about it.
"Looky, Walter, an avocado! What do you think of it?" My father
is the only person I know who says "looky!" He also says "lookit!"
What I think of avocados is this: On principle, I do not eat
green, slimy things, My mother doesn't eat them either. She says
she doesn't like the taste of avocado. That's good enough for me.
If there's any question at all about the taste, I'm leaving those
suckers alone.
My father loves them. Every time he brings one home, he acts like
it's a three-hundred-pound sailfish he's caught singlehanded, or an
elk he brought down with a bow and arrow.
He's really enthusiastic about avocados. He skins them and digs
out that oversized, stupid-looking pit, and then mashes up the slimy
green part with a fork. Then he puts lemon juice and vinegar, salt
and pepper, and powdered garlic and paprika on it. Of you have to go
to all that trouble to disguise the flavor, why bother, I say.
Then he makes a speech about it. "My goodness, this is one fine
avocado," he says. "You have to know how to choose them. You have
to look for the ones that are black and blasted looking. The pretty
green ones aren't fit to eat. The funny thing is that they reduce
the price of the really scrumptious ones just because they're ugly.
I guess they want to sell them before they rot completely."
My father isn't a bad guy, in my opinion. There are just a few
subjects, like avocados, on which he's irrational.
My mother had found another tuna-casserole recipe. This is
something of a hobby with her. She's constantly finding these
recipes in women's magazines. She tries another one at least once a
week. They all taste like tuna fish. Usually the have things in
them you wouldn't expect to eat with tuna fish - like grapes, hot-
pickle slices, fried Chinese noodles.
"I hope you will appreciate this, kiddo," my mother says, "seeing
that your mother took a healthy slice out of her finger whilst
chopping up the ingredients." She usually manages to injure herself
at least once while preparing a meal. She has a Band-Aid on her
finger.
"Eat up, champ," she says. "It's American." My mother has an
idea that tuna caught in Japanese waters is tainted with
radioactivity, so she always shops for brands canned within the
continental United States. Even Canadian brands are out. "They're
too chummy with the Commonists," she says. She calls Communists
"Commonists."
If you were blind, or only knew my mother from talking with her on
the telephone, you'd probably think she was about six feet tall...and
maybe two hundred and fifty pounds in weight. It's her voice, and
the way she talks. She sounds like she ought to be a big, slow-
moving person, maybe a little sloppy. Actually, she's small and
nervous, always well dressed, and a chain smoker. Once my father and
I have started eating our meal, she brings a little ashtray to the
table and puffs a cigarette between bites of food. This is far more
disgusting than avocado eating. If I can possibly get out of it, I
try not to have meals with my parents. I've complained to them about
various nauseating things they do, but it doesn't do any good.
"Everybody has a family," my mother says. I don't know what that
means.
Our apartment is new. We are the first people ever to live in it.
When we first moved into the building, it wasn't quite finished. The
whole place smelled of paint, and there was brown paper on the floors
in the elevator and the hallways. In those days, we had to take our
shoes off outside the the apartment door so we wouldn't track plaster
dust onto the carpet.
Come to think of it, I've never walked on the floor in our living
room. There are those clear plastic runners my mother put down,
making a kind of path through the living room to the dining alcove.
The furniture has plastic covers, too. My mother says that when you
decorate with light colors, you have to be careful. Nobody ever sits
in the living room, except when my parents have company - and then it
has to be company wearing suits and ties, and fancy dresses. When
they expect company like that, my father puts on a suit and tie, and
my mother puts on a fancy dress and rolls up the plastic runners, and
the all sit in the living room. I get called in to be introduced to
the company. I always stand at the edge of the living-room carpet.
The company says, "I understand you're a fine young man," or, "He
looks like a football player. Are you a football player?" I'm at
least a foot too short to be a football player. Besides which, I
hate football.
"Yes," I say, "I'm a football player." This happens -having
company in the living room - about twice a year. The rest of the
time, nobody sits there.
When regular people - relatives and such - come over, everybody
sits in the den. The den has a linoleum floor. Sometimes my father
sits around in his undershirt. When he's feeling funny, he gets
Nosferatu, my parakeet, and gets him to sit on his head. Apparently,
Nosferatu likes him. He'll sit on my father's head for an hour.
-=End
-=Typed in by Mr. Pez for about an hour.
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She says
she doesn't like the taste of avocado. That's good enough for me.
If there's any question at all about the taste, I'm leaving those
suckers alone.
My father loves them. Every time he brings one home, he acts like
it's a three-hundred-pound sailfish he's caught singlehanded, or an
elk he brought down with a bow and arrow.
He's really enthusiastic about avocados. He skins them and digs
out that oversized, stupid-looking pit,