Danny Flash and the Alien Crash

CHAPTER ELEVEN:

After school that day Andrew and I stopped by the library. We looked through several books on farming fruits and vegetables and finally decided on "Fruits Are Your Friends, and Where to Find Them." As I opened the book and read through the various fruits that apparently were my friends, I came across a list that looked like this.

Delicious Indigenous American Fruits

Blueberries

Cherries

Cranberries

Grapes

PawPaws

Persimmons

Strawberries

One of the characteristics of a fruit is that it contains seeds. This is why a tomato is actually a fruit. The book had chapters on how fruits differ from flowers, some of which also have seeds, like sunflower seeds, which are not fruits. A fruit, it turns out, has seeds that are typically enclosed within the flesh of the fruit, although with one exception. Do you know what exception that is? Strawberries! Strawberries are kind of magical when you think about it. They have their seeds on the outsideof their body!

It was filled with all kinds of interesting facts about fruit. I got a pencil and a piece of paper, and I started making my own list of the fruits that I thought I could find. It had handy charts and maps of the world and showed where some fruits could be found. Some were in the far reaches of the Amazon, to which I just simply didn't have the time to charter a plane and fly to the far reaches of the Amazon to get a rare fruit for this alien, much as I may have wanted to. I just didn't have the time. I still had to juggle school. So, at the top of my list I made an important distinction.

I wrote - "List of Reachable Fruits." My sister came by, and asked what I was working on. I told her I was making a list of fruits, and she started rattling off her own list, which was no help, because most of them I had already written down.

My list looked like this.

Blackberries

Blueberries

Strawberries

Peaches

Plums

Cantaloupe

Starfruit!!!

Jackfruit

Two of the fruits I knew would be hard to find, but I desperately wanted to try them. They sounded delicious in the book about fruits. And so, if I had any luck, maybe I'd get a new experience of my own. I mean, finding an alien in my backyard had kind of turned me on to new experiences.

Once my list was complete, I went upstairs and pulled out my piggy bank. My piggy bank was special to me, since I had been saving the money for a very long time, at least, for six years.

I hadn't touched the coins, and perhaps occasional wadded dollar bills, that I'd stuffed into the little top slot of the piggy bank. I call it a piggy bank, but it wasn't actually shaped like a pig at all. It was shaped like the Federal Reserve. It was a very cool piggy bank. But there was just one problem. It didn't have any way to get the money out, other than to break it.

"Well, I guess it's time to break the bank." I said to Andrew.

Andrew looked at me blankly. Some times play-on-words references were lost on him.

I lifted the piggy bank up over my head, and as I was about to crash it down, I paused, realizing that the shards of ceramic and coins that were about to litter my room, would probably be better off somewhere outside.