Avocado

SANITY ON BACKORDER

From Hive Peak Boulevard

By Danu Marche

Humor Columnist

Published: February 11, 2025

Synapse & Spectacle

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This week, my kitchen staged a coup.

It started with the last avocado. You know the one — sitting smugly in the fruit bowl like it just got tenure. I picked it up, gave it the gentlest thumb-press known to humankind, and it somehow managed to feel both underripe and seconds from collapse. Schrödinger’s produce.

I’ve been down this road before. I buy avocados with hopeful intentions, fully aware they will spend a mysterious number of days in a green purgatory before, at some untraceable midnight hour, becoming guacamole and compost simultaneously. It’s like dating someone who texts “can’t talk right now” for three months and then invites you to move in.

By day three, I had resorted to ceremonial checks: turning the avocado slowly in my hand, staring into its leathery skin for signs of weakness, whispering things like, “Just tell me what you need.” And yet — nothing. Still the same silent, unyielding orb.

Day four is when the rest of the produce joined in. The bananas began their slow transition from perky yellow to something that looked like they’d just returned from a cage match. The tomatoes, formerly bright and optimistic, developed soft spots like they were auditioning for a cautionary tale. And my lone surviving lime rolled under the toaster, presumably to die in private.

That’s when I realized the avocados have a pact — not just with each other, but with every other fruit in the house. They’ve unionized. Their demands? Unclear. Their methods? Psychological torment.

Halfway through my silent standoff with the bowl (yes, I’d carried my frustration into the office for moral support), movement caught my eye outside the workstation window. A squirrel — naturally — had wedged itself into the crook of the window frame, balancing on a paperback copy of The Collected Works of Kafka I’d left out there to sun. It was leafing through the pages with one claw like a disapproving librarian, pausing now and then to glance at me as if to say, “You’re not ready for the ending.” I don’t know if it meant the book’s ending or my avocado’s.

Midway through my breakdown, I shifted into problem-solving mode. I tried the classic “put it in a paper bag” trick, because apparently trapping an avocado with ethylene gas is supposed to speed up ripening. Except I forgot about it for two days. When I checked, the avocado had crossed over — fully brown, suspiciously watery, and smelling faintly of betrayal.

Of course, I did what we all do in moments like this: cut around the worst parts and told myself, It’s fine. But every bite tasted like a lecture on impermanence.

Meanwhile, the underripe avocados still in the bowl seemed to swell with confidence. I swear I heard one of them sigh contentedly when I threw the brown one out, like it had just won a silent bet.

Here’s the thing: we’ve all been here, whether it’s avocados, bread that goes from fresh to fossil overnight, or milk that chooses a random Tuesday to ruin your coffee. Food is unpredictable, life is fleeting, and the squirrel outside my window is almost certainly plotting a coup.

So yes, I’ll buy more avocados next week. And yes, they will betray me again. But maybe that’s the point — in a world that moves too fast, some things refuse to be rushed. Even if they taste terrible in the end.

If nothing else, it’s comforting to know the squirrel approves.

“If you’ve cracked the code on perfect avocado timing, please send instructions. And maybe the last chapter of Kafka — the squirrel won’t let me have it.”

©2025 Danu Marche