Already it’s peach time. I used to hate this time of year. We would be given peaches to eat. They would have a lot of juice that ran down our chins and arms with some of it dripping down the front of our shirts. What an awful, sticky mess! And the flavor of the peaches was too strong, too peachy. On top of that, we had to negotiate a pit that clung to the peach’s meat and wouldn’t let go. What a terrible thing to have to go through.
Today, in modern times, scientists have made peaches better by eliminating some of that juice and freeing the pit, so it doesn’t get in the way. It just so happens that these scientific efforts have also made peaches easier to work with in the factories that douse them in sugary syrup and can them so we can have peaches all winter long if we wish. Isn’t that fantabulous?
In addition, our modern transportation system has made it so that we can import peaches from south of the border where it’s summer all the time. They pick them green and ship them up here ripening on the way so we can enjoy the almost tasteless fruit with the texture of an apple and hardly any juice to run down your chin and arms or to drip onto your shirt. What a miracle!
Peaches are not the only fruit our scientists have improved through selective breeding or gene splicing or whatever they use. Watermelons have been made seedless. Imagine that! They used to have these awful seeds that got in the way and had to be spit out. The seeds also could be planted, and one could grow a watermelon themselves which would impact the entire market. We wouldn’t want to do that.
We used to use those seeds for an insanitary game. We would spit the seeds to see how far we could spit them, how accurate our spit could be, and how powerful the seed was when it hit something. These contests usually ended up in an unhealthy watermelon seed war with seeds being spit at each other and laughing, contaminated bodies rolling in the germ laden grass. Thank God our scientists have removed the seeds from watermelons so this kind of sick nonsense can’t happen. It’s good to know that scientists are out there working their little lab coats off to make the world a better place while at the same time keeping us from adulterating ourselves.
Not only have the scientists worked on peaches and watermelons, but they have also improved many of our fruits and vegetables. Tomatoes, for example, have been made so that machines can better pick them. People are no longer needed to do the backbreaking work of picking tomatoes. Isn’t science wonderful?
What about the vitamin content? That’s a question my friend who reads a lot of books has asked me. Now I haven’t mentioned him for a long time. He kinda keeps me away like you use a stick to keep a rattler from getting too close. Says I might be contagious, and he doesn’t want what I got. But I was spouting off about the miracle of free stone peaches and he pointed out that the vitamins, minerals, and flavonoids that our bodies need are not present in this new improved fruit to the degree they were in the old-fashioned messy fruit. He’s right. He showed me the research.
My retort to this complaint was, “What the hell do you think they make multivitamins for?” Modern science thinks of everything, don’t they? I feel that we should trust the science. Can you name me one time we couldn’t trust them?
My book-learning friend says we need to check to see who signs their check before we put trust in a scientist. I say horse patooey! These are learned people who spend their lives making our lives more convenient. A check isn’t going to make a difference in their findings, now is it? Convenience is where it’s at.
Well, my learned friend couldn’t keep his trap shut. He pointed out that scientists have also created nuclear weapons, robot dogs with guns and flame throwers, forever chemicals, and Teflon skillets. He said none of these are needed and they are all bad for our environment and the health and safety of people. Well, science keeps us safe from terrorists to viruses. And Teflon is so convenient we need more of it. So, I sent my book reading friend off shaking his head. I wonder when I will see him again.
In any case, despite the flak I received from my friend, I still maintain that we need to trust the science. Anyone who doesn’t trust the science will be handled in the modern way. I will unfriend them and block them on all social media I am involved in. So there!