It was a morning like any other. My ten year old son was in the kitchen, pondering his imminent breakfast, quick as it would have to be since he had to leave for school soon.

Despite the restrictions of time, DJ hovered over the bowl of fruit seeking resolution, staring at it, all the while brow-furrowed in contemplation, momentarily unequal to the task of deciding which kind of fruit to have.  

I entered the room and immediately noticed the perplexed look on my only son’s face. I couldn’t see why there was so much conflict in his eyes, since the bowl only contained apples and oranges. Yet there he was, rapt in conflict, as if summoning the necessary courage to hurt the feelings of fruit.

 “Dad, I just don’t know what kind of fruit to eat this morning”

But DJ was alone in his concern; the fruit itself could give a shit who ate it and when.

Leaving him to his dilemma, I repaired myself to the office and began my study of the difference(s) between apples and oranges.

-------

The comparing of apples and oranges is brought up any time two items are compared and really shouldn’t be. Some say the comparison is a false analogy, but I don’t get it. I love to wonder why an apple can’t be a good orange. You’ve thought about it too, I know. You can’t mix apples and oranges. Why not? Are they combustible? Will they chain react?

And despite the dire warnings of the idiom, I’ll compare the two of them all day long and the hell with it and why not? Both are generally round in shape and delicious. Both have skins. Both proffer good health as an incentive for consumption, unless you find that you’re allergic to good health.

The hapless French tend to compare apples and pears, which shows why Germany now owns most of Alsace and bits of the Metro. The Spanish tend to compare sweet potatoes and pears. Don’t know why. The Welsh compare honey and butter; the Poles, gingerbread and windmills. Albanians don’t compare things at all since the country is made mostly of rocks and twigs.

Apples are by definition happier, and stupider.  But don’t insult one; they bruise easily and can be terribly thin skinned in an argument.

Oranges tend to be more moody up front, a might skittish off the stem even, with occasional bouts of depression. And just try feeding an 8000 milligram tab of prescription lithium to a bad humored orange on one of its ‘off’ days. See what happens.

According to American folklore, it was said that Jonny Appleseed hated oranges, because he kept trying to plant them and they wouldn’t grow, and you don’t get oranges from an orange seed like you do with an apple anyway. It was at this point that my research ended.

----

Back in my office, awash in my fruity reverie, my son called out from the kitchen, “Dad! Hurry! There’s a tomato at the bottom of the bowl!” This development would definitely add a new wrinkle to the apple/orange question.

Sometimes, ordinary things in life can be so radically different and with such a dearth of commonality that they can’t be compared to anything else whatsoever, as if the fabric of the Universe would be rent asunder by the mere attempt. Among these:

Men and Women.

Cats and Dogs.

Liberals and Conservatives.

Jelly and Jam.

Joe Biden and A Box Of Nails

This brings me to tomatoes, which are left out of the apples and oranges bit altogether, due to their uniqueness. But since there was one in the bowl, I felt forced to consider their contribution to the overall equation.

Tomatoes stand by their own arrogant selves. They are at once admired and hated. They can’t be compared to anything because they’re really above it all, food-wise. They taste like themselves. But a tomato is not a fruit. It is instead, a horrific red roundish orb of dubious nutritious quality, full of chlorofluorocarbons and a kind of mediocrity wrapped in a wrinkled and false cloak of narcissism.

Oranges, like apples (and money) grow on trees. Tomatoes grow on vines. There is no comparison, but they are cheaper at 49 cents a pound, with coupon.

In order to come up with a winner in the apple/orange/tomato comparison, I had to resort to three hypothetical illustrations of wanton violence to prove my point. See if you agree with my conclusion, using a satisfactory/unsatisfactory scale.

1. You throw an “Arizona Sweet” Orange at your overtly flatulent husband because his Valentine’s Day gift was pathetic, and yet the orange won’t splatter and break on his face like you wanted it to. Unsatisfactory. 

2. You heave a “Red Delicious” Apple at the empty cranium of your erstwhile boyfriend because he, as you put it, is always a ‘royal douchebag’. Yet it won’t fracture his nose in three places as you intended. Unsatisfactory. 

3. You pitch an overripe “Early Girl” Tomato at the unprotected ‘junk’ of an unwanted paramour in the produce section at Safeway, causing the dude to writhe uncontrollably on the floor while holding his swollen privates in front of a gang of blue hairs by the cucumber stack. Satisfactory. 

So, in closing, to sum up the whole apples to oranges comparison thing; tomatoes win. I think you’ll agree.

As for DJ’s breakfast, he opted for a granola bar. The fruit in the bowl would have to fight it out another day.

And one more thing: You say tomato. I say tomato. But you’re saying it wrong.