Perfect Fruit

WAIT! before sending angry emails and rainbow emojis, read on. This isn’t a rant about RuPaul’s Drag Race or some other in-your-face transgender or alternative life-choice. It’s simply a non-political commentary on Americans’ often irrational expectation for perfection, irrespective of personal effort to achieve even basic mediocrity.

As consumers we’ve learned to expect – no demand – perfection. We sort through piles of consumer goods on a quest for perfection, foregoing scuffed packages for ones that look bright and fresh, as if taken from an ad agency photo shoot. What’s inside is the same as that in the rejected box that’s been shoved aside, relegated to the Island of Misfit Toys or the desperate grasp of a waterlogged homeowner that will settle for that last sump pump in a beat up box on a dusty shelf.

I can’t buy that pair of jeans…. there’s a thread on the tag…. I’ll sort till I find one without a thread. (Because it’s America and I have options.)

How many times have you pawed through a rack of apples looking for perfection that even Snow White wouldn’t refuse. No spots, scars, marks, dings or dents. Only shiny flawlessness is acceptable. And what store would allow their display to contain imperfection? Surely there’s some guy in a white apron visually inspecting and spit-shining each genetically modified, over-waxed, insecticide ridden apple for customer appeal, with bruised individuals discarded.

We’ve been trained to expect perfect fruit; shiny boxes, eye-grabbing bait-like packaging, and stacked redundancy. And we’ve carried that expectation into the absolute imperfection that is the human condition: The passive quest for the perfect job, the perfect partner, the perfect child, the perfect pet; expecting and demanding but not necessarily investing to achieve.

A couple of times a year the local animal shelter calls me with desperate requests for donated necessities; mostly cat litter and food. They know I have a big trailer and an army of available help to unload a couple thousand pounds of supplies. I walk through the shelter during each visit and look at the “surrendered” animals. They all have a story. Most have been discarded because of a ding or dent: imperfect but salvageable. The shelter has become the Plan B One-step for what is supposed to be a lifelong commitment. Just an imperfect four-legged apple that isn’t worth the time, love, or effort.

This is Flower. She came along as a package deal with my wife. As “apples” go, she’s a mess and could have been euthanized as a puppy. She had a series of medical issues common with puppy mills. But Bekki (who climbs 50 foot trees to renest baby birds after storms) saved her. As if appreciating her rescue, Flower has given back nearly a decade of snuggly companionship and proven to be a good little friend.

But there are no shelters for kids.

Occasionally the world produces a saint like our friend Drew who has opened his home and heart to a family of adoptive children, accepting dents and dings as nothing more than life-bruises to be healed with love and understanding. But he and his wife are the exception. Too many kids are left to find their own way, dealing with the stresses of dysfunction and a culture that expects perfection but does little to strive for it, except to get angry and scream at the sky.

And when your apple – the once apple of your eye – gets a ding or a dent and you no longer see them as shiny and perfect, it’s back to the display for one with no visible scars. Because everyone deserves perfect fruit. Right? But that’s not striving, it’s self-centered, rule-changing commitmentless narcissism.

Apparently the same now holds true for one’s friendships, job, country, faith, politics and really anything that requires commitment and long-term personal investment. Do overs and redoes have become the immediate fix for a culture of sky-screamers that have been trained from birth to demand.

I have several apple trees. My apples – natural as they are – are mostly misshapen bug-bit mutants, scarred and imperfect. I’ve become more tolerant of imperfection, maybe because they’re my own, confident that scars don’t make the apple.