10/22/21

Tayde brought a zapota to our Friday breakfast, so I got to try a new fruit. The zapota looks like a big potato, tastes like a date, and has a core made of chicle (the stuff gum is made of). It’s pretty weird to eat an exotic fruit that essentially has a stick of gum in the middle. I think of gum as a hyper-processed, unreal quasi-food, but also as something incredibly commonplace. Zapota, on the other hand, is totally natural, but completely alien to me. Eating zapota for the first time was an exercise in cognitive dissonance: I know that this is a real fruit, that grows on trees, that people have been eating for thousands of years, but I still can’t help but think of it as an imitation of gum, rather than the other way around. Ultimately, the flavor wasn’t great, but it made a highly thought-provoking breakfast. 4/10 fruit, 9/10 experience.

In the afternoon, I taught a Neil Gaiman story (Click-Clack the Rattlebag) that had been suggested in the comments here like two months ago, so thank you Britt, if you are still reading. I appreciate it, and I think the students did too.