An Open Letter to Honeycrisp Apples

Dear Honeycrisp Apples,

I know what you’re thinking. This is another one of those seasonal love letters, akin to decorative gourds or pumpkin flavored things. In these letters, the writer begs the subject of their devotion to be less fickle, to stay around longer than the brief fleeting moments during which their paths cross at a certain time of year.

No. This letter is different.

It’s 2:31pm, and I’ve already eaten three of you. I don’t care that five of you cost me more than $8. I would bake you into a pie so that I could experience what I can only assume is pure ecstasy (because when you combine pie with the apple I love more than any other, how can you go wrong?) but then I feel I’d be depriving myself of the pure joy that only comes from that first bite into your crisp skin, when the juice runs down my face and I reach for a napkin, but I wasn’t really prepared for this situation, even though this is the third time I’ve experienced it today, because ONE CAN NEVER BE PREPARED FOR SUCH MAGIC. (I know. Everyone says that you’re too juicy and soft for a pie, but that’s neither here nor there, and only contributes to your overall mystique.)

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Anyway. Here’s what I have to say: fuck you, Honeycrisp.

Fuck you and your stupid seasonal ways that made me literally push that woman out of my way in the grocery store, because she was standing in front of your tiny “it’s still too early in the season for the full crop, but look at what we did manage to get into our baskets at the orchard because that’s how much we care about you the consumer” display and I couldn’t get to you fast enough.

Do you know that I would eat apples year round if you would bother to show up at the party in, say, the middle of January? And stuck around for more than six weeks? Teachers would be totally on board with receiving apples as tokens of suck-up-iness if they didn’t have to worry they’d be subjected to a Fuji or a Gala or, god forbid, a Pink Lady when all of you have decided to be on vacation for the rest of the year. Doctors would get to spend all their time golfing (which, if we’re honest, is all they really want to do), because everyone would be eating at least one Honeycrisp a day without even hoping for the added benefit of keeping the doctors away.

But no. I hear there are people all over the world who don’t even know you exist. I was in New York last month and was basically improvising a lyric poem on your beauty and wonder to anyone who would listen, and they were all “What are you talking about?” (And that’s not a comment on my improv poetry skills, because I will tell you, that piece was fantastic.)

What I’m saying is that the world would be a better place if only you would stop being such an elitist ass. In the grand scheme of time, you’re like that one Ray Bradbury story where all the kids are waiting and waiting for the one day the sun shows up, and there’s that one girl who is more excited than anything, because she’s seen the sun before and the rest of the kids haven’t, but the other kids decide to be jerks and lock her in the closet and she misses the whole thing and I CHALLENGE YOU TO READ THAT STORY AND NOT WELL UP BECAUSE IT IS SO FREAKING SAD.

That’s what you’re doing to us. You give a scant few of us one day of summer and then you lock us in the closet for the rest of the year. And I can’t take it anymore. Please. Let’s work something out.

With Kind Regards,

Micky