Rambutan

“You were excited to find WHAT at the grocery store?” I asked my friend Erin while sitting around her fire pit watching football yesterday.

“Rambutans,” she said excitedly.

I must have looked puzzled because she ran inside to grab her bowl full of them as her husband shared they fell in love with them on their honeymoon in Thailand.

As he tells me this, a bowl of golf ball-sized, spiky things appears on the table. That’s what they’re excited to eat?! Never have I ever seen those or heard of them.

Erin proceeds to take one from the bowl and swiftly peels it while telling me what it takes like. “Try one,” she says to me (the not adventurous eater).

I decline the offer and the bowl sits there, staring at me. That does not look at all like food on the outside. How can it possibly be good? But they say it’s sweet and I like sweet things most of the time. The bowl continues to stare as I go for a cookie instead.

An hour later I loose the staring contest and decide to try one. All eyes turn to me. I pick it up gently expecting it to pinch me with its spikes… it doesn’t. I peel it expecting it to be hard… it isn’t. I take a bite thinking it’ll be sweet and juicy and chewy all at the same time. I take another bite, not sure what my thoughts are about this fruit I’ve just tried.

“So?! What do you think?”

“Um,” I say while taking another bite, “it’s fine. I wouldn’t say it’s anything special. But it’ll sure be an excellent personal narrative to share with my class.”