Life's little tools

He still has the citrus peeler, this little plastic doodad that mom bought in like 1985. It's like a crochet hook you pull around the edge of your orange. He said it was from a Tupperware party. You can vaguely recall the sensation that was Tupperware, just as you can imagine a time when this kitchen wasn't built yet, that where you stand now was a bunch of air in the air. One thing you didn't like about that orange crocheting tool was the way it tended to send these little micro-mists of orange peel oil, the most stingy sort, straight into your eye. Now you realized, today in fact, during your awkward stop at that giant country store on 5&10, that they still make those things. But now you put them on your finger like a ring and sort of fondle the orange while ripping around its skin ala Christopher Soprano on collection day. It's an 89 cent pleasure you'll forgo for now. The 80's version was a lot less intimate, but maybe 80's people were a lot less desperate to commune with their fruit and a lot more anxious to store it in plastic. Perhaps some of these memories will come like psychotropic flashbacks, but now that stingy oil taste is in your mouth as you recall biting directly into the orange, ripping off a section and pressing the whole damn thing into your face while sucking it dry. You left a lot of violated fruit out there on dusty roads, while here in this kitchen, a little waxy coil curls politely on itself next to the compost bucket.