I find buying apricots strange

24 Jul, 2025

Heya! This blogpost title was traded to me by Nina!¹ If you wanna know about the how/why behind that, you can read the post I made that started this whole thing.

Anyways - I've never actually bought apricots myself. I mean, I've had them before, but I never went out of my way to buy them myself. Until now! Because, y'know, can't write a blogpost about buying apricots without having bought apricots.

And, I mean... I do kind of get it? The strangeness of buying apricots, that is. I'm not sure whether I just bought bad quality apricots, but they don't really taste like much of anything. This is the most 5/10 fruit purchasing experience I've ever had.

I mean, most fruit are pretty strange, if you think about it. We've all seen those "weird" pictures of medieval watermelons, right? Most of us have no clue what a lot of fruits used to look like before all the artificial selection we did. I mean- It's not like I'm complaining, I like my juicy watermelons - it's just... odd. It's weird knowing that all these fruits we eat are kind of... unnatural? I think that's a bit of a strong word to use here, but you know what I mean, right? It's weird knowing that these familiar, every day things used to look so different when you subconsciously assumed they just kinda always looked that way. I mean, it makes sense in hindsight. You just don't really expect it for some reason. I'll never have a 100% 'natural' watermelon, and I just think that's kind of weird.

By the way, did you know that most artificial banana flavoring is actually based on a breed of banana that isn't really sold anymore? That's why it tastes so different from "real" bananas. Fruits are weird.²

Grocery stores are also weird. It's kind of mind boggling how much work went into getting a loaf of shitty white bread from where it was made to the grocery store i end up buying it from to make grilled cheese sandwiches with. There's so much effort that goes into making all of the every day things we use and consume, but it's largely invisible. I don't know who made these apricots.

It's odd how much effort is behind all these things we take for granted. If I go into my grocery store, I just assume they'll have stuff for me to buy there. If I get a watermelon, I assume it'll be like 90% watermelon flesh. That's a watermelon. It's just sort of how things are. But there's so much effort that went into these things that you just never see, even though most people know that it's there.³ It's weird knowing just how much of our lives is built on top of systems most of us only have a surface level understanding of. I guess that's not exactly a profound revelation, but it is kind of odd to think about.