Cutting Pineapples.

[Submitting this as one of my journal entries for Composition]

Last night, dad and I had dinner. It was just the two of us at the dinner table; mum left for the airport at 3’o clock in the afternoon, and Paul and Naomi were across the street, hanging out with the neighbours.

I had eaten earlier, but just to follow my dad’s wish that I join at the table, I accepted his invitation. As I pulled the plastic wrap that covered the bowl filled with pineapples, dad pointed at another bowl and said, “Try that; it tastes better.”

I looked with disdain at the bowl mentioned. To me, it looked like a bowl filled with unrecognizable brown bits. I cannot even begin to guess what the content’s origin was, or even what its former composition was. I shrugged and helped myself to one of the slices of pineapple.

When I placed the huge chunk of pineapple on my plate (ironically, it was the smallest in the bowl), I cut out a small piece and ate it. A few bites later, I found that I couldn’t really eat everything.

“Oh, that’s the middle… it’s hard, isn’t it?” my dad asked, seeing my difficulty with the pineapple.

I tried in vain to cut the hard inedible part away. I blame part my unfruitful attempt on the butter knife I was equipped with.

“That’s not how you do it,” my dad said. He reached over and got my plate, then took out a real knife and cut it out for me.

I stayed silent. I felt like crying, but not enough for it to actually happen. You must be thinking that I was going to cry out of frustration or maybe you’re thinking, “Leeann, you’re 17 years old. Why can’t you cut pineapples?” But I wasn’t even thinking about my inability to cut pineapples. I was thinking about how, for a long time, my dad was actually being a dad for me.

I thought about how he’d always give Naomi massages, or how he’d always take Paul out to buy things… For my siblings, he’s still a dad. I became distant.

But at that time, I had a taste of the fatherly love that my friends would talk about, the kind that I thought were only seen on television or written about in movies.

[Didn't exactly happen last night. It happened awhile ago. This was badly written, hahaha. But it's not like my teacher can tell.]