Feeling Melon-choly

Something remarkable has apparently happened right before the old gg’s eyes and I must have missed it. I’m talking about the elevation of the lowly melon –yes, the cantaloupe, the honeydew and our favorite down here in the hot Texas summers, the watermelon – into the lofty realm of the fruit family. This revelation came to me two days ago in a restaurant Mrs. gg and I visited. For an appetizer I ordered a fruit salad from the menu, thinking I would receive the usual assorted mixture of apples, grapefruit,pears, peaches, banana, etc. that one normally associates with a fruit salad. But to my surprise and dismay, the waitress brought me a bowl of chopped up melons, with nary a fruit to be found. Have any of you readers ever had this same experience? Did it make you grouchy as it did me? I thought for an instant that perhaps I had become a victim of some kind of bait and switch tactic but then I began to wonder: Is it possible that some people –restaurant owners among them –consider a melon to be a fruit? I used another instant to think about challenging the young woman who was our waitress but then I told myself she’s probably making no more than minimum wage and working too many tables to be held responsible for confusing melon with fruit. More importantly, I knew Ms. gg would not be amused in the least were the young lady to have shoved a bowl of melon into my face. So I just kept my powder dry and ate my melon, which was not difficult since I actually do like melon. It’s just that on this particular evening, if I’d wanted melon I’d have asked for melon. But I did vow when I got home to conduct the necessary research into the differences between melon and fruit. Here’s what the gg found: Fruit is the “sweet and fleshy product of a tree or flowering plant that contains seed.” Melon is “any of the various typically sweet gourds.” In other words, fruit comes from a tree or flowering plant, whereas a melon comes from a gourd. This was enough to convince the old gg that fruit is not melon and vice versa. I intend to put these definitions on a card and carry it in my pocket whenever from now on I go into a restaurant and order fruit or, depending on my mood, melon, and use it to confront minimum wage earning, over-burdened and under-appreciated waitresses who need nothing more than to be educated on the difference.

gg