I'm sitting with a couple of friends, eating my turkey sandwich and generally making a good time of it. We're discussing whatever it is that teenagers make a habit of discussing when quite suddenly an apple bumps softly into my foot. Surprised, I look around me for the source and spot a gaggle of extremely loud girls screaming at one another and giving their food a less than adequate level of supervision. Spurred by a natural desire to instigate the absurd, I roll the apple on back to the girl from whom I expected it came and shouted, good naturedly, "I think you dropped this!"
Maybe it's because I have a young face or maybe it's because I smack of insolence but the girl's response to my statement, instead of "Thank you!" or "This isn't my apple, you ingrate!", was "Are you a freshman?"
In high school, there aren't many things more insulting than being thought a freshman, and being a senior, I was particularly miffed at the implication. For most part, I kept my irritation in check and instead of firing back something really nasty just gave her a big, shit-eating grin and said, "I don't know. Are you a fruit vendor?"
In my mind, this is a fairly light and largely ridiculous response to what (at the time) could be construed as a major slight. Knowing that, I nodded to her in goodbye and sat down to continue my meal. Approximately two seconds later I heard a loud, deafening in retrospect, thwack and ducked to avoid whatever it was that was planning on hurting me. After a moment of inactivity, I cracked open one eye and glanced up to see the hand of my good buddy Matt holding that self-same apple in a death grip.
For a moment, I was confused. Why was Matt holding that apple? I looked at the now standing girl, the stunned expression on my friend's face and revaluated the situation. This person had just tried to kill me with an apple. What does one do in response to that? Attack her? Throw my sandwich? Fortunately, the gods intervened and set off the bell to return to class before things got too ugly. Presented with an easy out, I decided to simply get to my feet, remove the apple from Matt's hand and take a huge bite out of it before walking off to class.
The moral of the story is that apples don't kill people - people kill people. Remember that next time you find a piece of fruit at your feet.