The Pits

My grandparents had a giant cherry tree in their backyard.
When I was younger I remember spending almost my whole summer in that cherry tree.
My cousins did too.
And my younger aunts and uncles.
It was kind of a summer meeting spot.
Especially in July when the cherries were on.

Each year I would scale a little higher in the tree. I am not sure if it was bravery, or my growing arms and legs that provided increase in the climb.

One summer, I reached the top.

I was up where I am sure the wind itself was born.
The cherries there were huge and dark red.

Not many cherries at the top had beak pecks out of them--there were no larger branches for the birds to land on to snack.

But the very best part about being the "man at the top," was the pit-spitting order.

At the top, you could eat and eat...and spit the dripping pits on the cousins below you in the tree.
After enduring a few years of being a "bottom dweller", revolted by the pits rained down on me by those loftier, it was liberating to be the spitter!

Every year I would eat cherries until it made me sick.
Literally.
Every year my mom and grandma would warn me to stop eating, but I couldn't.
Fresh cherries are like crack.
So every year I got cherry-induced diarrhea.

That cherry tree eventually got some kind of worm, and had to be put down.
I was sad.
It was like losing an old friend.
(An old friend that produced snacks, and occasional stomach cramping.)

This year, my sweet father-in-law brought us a butt-load of freshly picked cherries.
(No pun intended.)
I wish I could say that I shared them, but I did not.
I needed them.

I have been having gastrointestinal distress.
Let's just say that the benefits of eating fiber is a lie.
Or the "fiber" I have been eating is made from some type of cork.

I remembered the "magic" of cherries from my childhood, and I was hoping that maybe they would help things out, down below, if I ate them all.

Didn't work.
Nothing works out the same as you remember when you were younger.
I never used to worry about fiber in my diet.
Things were always just "regular."

I also used to like amusement parks.
I could hang upside down for hours.
And turn cartwheels.
Now those same things made me dizzy and a little sick.

Getting old is like being a "bottom dweller" forever, with life constantly pinging you in the head with pits.

Rock hard, hemorrhoid-inducing pits.