“As if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

This one’s gonna be a dandy.

Of all things I could be inspired to write a post from, anything ranging from the eloquent, the emotion-ridden, even simply the animated, this post is inspired by no more than 3 grapes. 3 grapes! And from this noble beginning, I will express the final point of what I’m sharing with you today; the media has our collective consciousness by the balls. Yeah. Watch me fill this one in.

The other day I was just getting into my car to go to work, and remembered that I had not eaten anything aside from a piece of toast and some coffee. I was already slightly late, so I walked to the fridge in my garage, grabbed a few grapes off their stem without looking, and shoved them hurriedly into my mouth, now walking back to the car.

Within moments I was in a state of sheer panic.

Within my never-ending stream of thoughts that occur throughout the day, at the very second I was chewing up my modest breakfast, a memory surfaced from my unconscious mind, surging it’s way into my psyche, flooding every sense with it’s message; the “message” being a product of the following insurgent memory. This memory was of a news report I had seen in passing as a child, a concerned young news reporter interviewing a wide-eyed woman in a grocery store. ReporterGirl, with an authoritative and even slightly condescending tone was telling the interviewee about “the dangers of imported foods”. More specifically, she was talking about black widow spiders making nests within batches of grapes, being picked by unsuspecting migrant workers, who load them onto trucks to have them sold to us unsuspecting whities, who then eat them and perish indefinitely.

 

 

 

Be afraid.

ReporterGirl’s message couldn’t be more plain and true. What she was telling us is that our food is not even fit to eat without a certain amount of scrutiny, and moreover fear. Through the wide-eyed woman’s eyes one could see panic, bewilderment, every emotion that would lead to her becoming more reserved, more guarded, more inclined to close her mind.. more afraid of day to day life.

 

And as much as I had rubbed off her stupid, incredulous expression, the reporters laser eyes piercing into her victim’s soul, the intensity of the imagery, there was only one thing on my mind as I stood there stupidly in my garage, eyes welled up with tears. I looked about for a place to spit out what was surely dozens of tiny baby spiders, breeders of death and holocaust swarming in my mouth. I began to sweat as I walked toward the garbage.

 

Then I stopped.

 

Breathing in deeply, I stopped to think of how the grapes tasted, how delicious and juicy they were; and also the absence of any evidence there were spiders in my mouth. Slowly my heart rate returned to normal, and my body hummed with order as I mastered what was seconds ago a matter of paramount importance.. 3 grapes.

 

This experience re-enforced within me a terrifying realization of how strongly the media impacts not only simply our thoughts and opinion, but our experiences. Even through the passage of time between watching the news report as a child and the Grape Incident the other day, through even my own initial small amount of objective thinking back then and my next-to-paranoid sense of objectivity at present, that amount of panic came through.

 

I was so ashamed of this event that I thought to never write about it, even though the inspiration was almost instantaneous (after I began breathing properly again that is). I’m happy I have.