The Pickle Song

by Arlo Guthrie.


I don't want a pickle/ just wanna ride on my motorcycle
And I don't wanna die/ just wanna ride on my motorcycle

I feel crunchy. Like a pickle. Not a sweet pickle. Or even a yummy baby dill pickle. Just an in betweener pickle. Sweet pickles make my face contort in an "I'm going to die if I swallow this" manner, so I try to avoid those. Dill pickles, I heart greatly. The little crunch squeak, crunch squeak as I munch is a joy to my "oral auditory ear", as Michael Jackson would say. (Here's a shout out to all the people who watched that part of This Is It).

I feel kind of like a Wild Ginger pickle. I was there on Saturday for lunch, and I had some with the lovely duck with the most excellently flavorful plum sauce on the side. WG pickles seem a little sweet and a little sour. I ate one. It made my salivary glands work a little and my face scrunch a little because I couldn't figure out if I liked it or not. But it's a pickle, so I was bound to try it unless it's super sickly sweet like relish. ** I considered a bit and let my mouth carry on the conversation that I had started while in the back of my mind I mulled over the value of the pickle. I decided I didn't know what to think of it, so I tried another, with the same disconcerting result. It was kind of like eating a ho-hum strawberry and so you try another to see if by eating the next one you will be able to remember what strawberries are really supposed to taste like. In such a situation, before you know it, all the strawberries are gone. Similarly, before I knew it, all the pickles on the plate were gone and my luncheon partner had to fend for himself in the pickle department. But it bothered me, because even though I had eaten all the pickles, I still hadn't figured out if I liked them or not.

I am in a period of my life where I am eating Wild Ginger pickles. I am getting sick of the crunch and of the inability to tell if I like the taste or not. As I work my way through the pickle, I hope I figure out if I like it or not. Life is just one big pickle - you don't have the ability to just eat one little hole, like in Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. You have to keep going, even if it feels like the cop in the Pickle song (see above) wrote you a ticket, put the ticket in the pickle, and shoved it down your throat. (Luckily, I am not feeling that way at present. Just to be clear.)

Here's hoping I figure out my pickling recipe and get out of this crunchy, disconcerting Wild Ginger pickle phase and make all the rest of my life's pickle a yummy baby dill.

**(I am usually really good at telling a pickle's sweet factor from ten paces. I have had to develop this art because usually when I take pickles I take a lot of them and it looks exceedingly wasteful if I am someplace and I have a pile of pickles on my plate, with one that has a big chomp out of it and a rather queasy look on my face. [Yes, my face can look queasy. Do not quibble with me on grammar today. I am in a pickling mood and you would get nowhere.])