I relived the moment of Original Sin this week at Bishop’s Orchards, in Guilford, Connecticut. This is prime pick-your-own-fruit time—at Bishop’s, blueberries and peaches are bursting at the skin. Pick-your-own presents the daunting moral dilemma of being surrounded by fruit at its ripest, but having to wait until you’re done filling your basket—and weighing it—before you can take a single bite.
At first, I resisted. It was 11:30 am on a weekday. I eyed the other people picking fruit alongside me—a pair of elderly women and a mother with two toddlers—and pictured how each would scold me if they saw me eating a peach before paying. The toddlers would point at me and simply cry, sensing evil. The elderly women, no doubt hardy Connecticut moralists, would tackle me, Edith diving for my hamstrings while Harriet hooked her forearm around my throat.
But then, under the midday sun, intoxicated by the alcoholic waft of fallen peaches fermenting underfoot, I thought I heard a peach talking:
“Deprive them of profits?” it said. “Where did you go to business school, Sesame Street? There are more peaches here than can possibly be picked! Just eat me. Who’s going to know?”
I caved in. I picked the fruit. It was hot to the touch. I bit into it. What ensued is probably best described by page 254 of a Nora Roberts bodice-ripping romance novel. Hearts pounding, passionate ravishment, milky white flesh, etc.
At that point it was a slippery slope. I moved next to the blueberry bushes, where I might as well have worn a black-and-white striped jumpsuit and a ball and chain around my ankles. I tossed a few berries in my mouth for every one I plunked in the bucket. And forget talking; these blueberries were hollering: “Yaaay! Best crime EVER!! Eat us without paying! Yipee!! Sweet juicy crime!”
Oh yeah, I had s old my soul. It was over for me. I imagined that twenty minutes later I’d be sprinting down the highway carrying a stolen TV over my head with a police chopper firing rounds at my heels.
To make matters worse, I overheard the following exchange in the blueberry bushes, between a mother and her toddler son.
“There’s too many people here,” said the kid.
“That’s OK, sweetie,” she said in that calm, simple, explaining-the-world way that only moms have. “People that pick their own fruit are usually pretty nice people.”
Gulp. Unless they’re compulsive fruit thieves.
At the weighing/paying station on the way out, I noticed a little coffee tin with a sign: “Sin Bin.” That was all it said. “Sin Bin.” It was full of money. It was the orchard’s silent acknowledgement of the fundamental weakness of humans faced with fruit. I paid for the peaches and the blueberries that had made it to the scales—at well under supermarket prices—and jammed a wad of ones into the Sin Bin. Instant redemption. Yes, people that pick their own fruit are pretty nice people after all.
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