Strawberries...the Sparkling Variety

Fox News was on. It was the evening after mid-term elections. The meal was a very strange assortment of foods…dinner isn’t usually this random. Soggy sweet potato fries, peas, and gravy covered meatballs sat on my plate. The plate I had chosen was of average size, but there was still a lot of dead space around the food. Each miniature pile of food had its own corner of the plate. As with most meals, it didn’t taste horrible. I can however count on it not keeping me full until 8pm. I digress; the real gem of this story is another argument over nothing. The dessert we had was a crumbly biscuit with strawberries spooned on top with a milky crème poured over the whole thing. This has a name, but it’s not important. The important name is that of the strawberries.

“These are called sparkling strawberries, they’re very good,” my grandma said as she pointed out the dessert items. Meanwhile, I’m thinking to myself that these strawberries look suspiciously close to frozen strawberries, which is exactly what they were. But with a word like “sparkling” in front of the item name, they must be the best. I assembled my dessert and ate it. It was tasty and very cold. It was cold simply because some of the strawberries weren’t thawed all the way through yet. Not surprised. My grandpa was not so reserved as I was.

“These strawberries don’t taste very good.” He said this after I watched him drink the strawberry juice water out of the serving bowl with a spoon.

My grandma counteracted him with a “well they’re sparkling strawberries from Hy-Vee.”

Now, back in my head, I’m trying to picture my grandma standing in the frozen food isle fondling each bag of “sparkling strawberries” in an effort to pick out the best one.

After taking another bite of this dessert, my grandpa responds with “I’m just saying they’re not as good as fresh strawberries.”

“Well what do you expect for this time of year?” said my grandma. Silence followed this critical debate over the strawberries. My ears then rediscovered the TV, because Fox News was on.