In the kitchen one recent morning, I set about to slice up a watermelon.
My wife was reading the obituaries — as she often does over coffee — pointing out the men my age who’d died, some of them quite suddenly.
“You wash these before slicing them, right?”
“Why would I wash a watermelon?”
“The same reason you wash anything — except melons are worse. They grow on the ground and the soil could be contaminated with E. coli. I read somewhere that the farm workers don’t have proper toilet facilities and they poop in the fields. The E. coli gets in the soil, the soil touches the melons… next thing you know, you’re in the hospital.”
I paused.
“Would you like some to bring to work?”