October 7, 1998

Detective Work

Sherlock Holmes says to learn about a person, all you have to do is pay attention to two areas on their person: the shoes and hands. Hands give a strong indication of their line business and life, and shoes tell you quite readily where they've recently traveled. However, these only provide mere supposition. The real secret to learning about people though, is in an action. Just watch how a person eats an orange.

Think that there is no secret to how to eat an orange, that everyone does it exactly the same? Au contraire, my ignorant friend. There are three basic types of people just to begin with. There are your vampires, who grind up the orange's innards to drink of the juice, leaving the mushy pulp behind. Others eat the fruit of the orange, both juice and pulp. And a scant few just eat it all, including the rind. Any book on Freud would easily come up with psychosexual tendencies inherent in each of these eating styles.

But what a person eats is not the only distinction. Some people are peelers and dividers, savoring one wedge at a time. Others are cutters, using blades and knifes to lacerate the orange into whatever they deem the proper divisions. And finally, there are the apple eaters. They just bite into an orange and eat whatever chunks they manage to gnaw off.

And once again, there must be psychological profiles that work with all these. I am personally an apple eater who enjoys the entire orange, even the peel. What does that say about me? And how about you? How do you eat an orange?

Comments:

• It was kinda funny that your email was about fruit today. I'm not much of an orange eater. I decided that I lik banannas again though. Isn't that exciting? It's the latest of my food kicks. If I had to eat an orange, I would be really anal about it. I takes me like three times longer to peel the thing that it does to eat it. Well, I gotta get back to work. But I just thought I'd share my bananna revelation with you.
  -- Leah
  
  

• I have no set way of eating an orange. I will, depending on my mood and the orange utinsels at hand, pare and slice it, cut a hole in the top and partake of the juicis within, pick the rind off with my fingernails or put the damn thing down and take the bananna sitting next to it.
  -- Ray