coconut

Last weekend, two friends found this coconut on the southwestern shore of Washington State. We were all excited to see it, as coconuts grow nowhere near our part of the world. And we were amazed that it may have made the journey from Japan after the Tsunami struck in 2011.

My darling husband grabbed the coconut and gave it a good shake to see if it had been tainted.  The coconut water sloshed around inside, and Brad determined that there was no way seawater could've gotten into it. He wanted to crack it open. 

He gave it a few good whacks against a large piece of driftwood.

It opened.

As everyone else crowded around to see the old fruit, Brad threw his head back and poured some of the liquid into his mouth.  The group let out a collective shriek.  "GROSS!!!"

A split second after the liquid touched his mouth Brad spit it out, gagged, and threw the coconut.

"Dude! I could smell that as soon as it cracked open!"  shouted a friend.

Brad was too busy gagging to respond.

"What the crap are you thinking!?!"  yelled his wife (aka me).  "You just put anything in your mouth that you find on the beach!?"

I picked up the coconut and gave it a sniff.  It smelled of old basketball sneakers and dead things.

Brad walked down into the ocean (up to his knees) to try to induce vomiting; no one wants to die from old sea coconut, after-all.  He was bummed out that he hadn't thought that one through first.

For hours afterward, Brad swore he could still smell the coconut.

As it turns out, at the exact moment he went to drink it, a large gust of wind blew most of the liquid sideways onto his cheek.

[I'm pretty sure that was God's way of smacking the rotten coconut juice out of Brad's mouth, since I was too far away to do it myself.]

The coconut smell had inserted itself into Brad's beard hair and refused to budge.

When he asked me if I could smell it on his breath, I said No, but his cheek smelled.

We bought some scented lotion at a local farmer's market, and that covered up the smell enough that Brad felt OK being out in public for the rest of the day.

Then we drew this heart, and I posed with him to show that even though he makes poor food choices, I still love him.

The End.