A PEACH BY ANY OTHER NAME...

Some peaches have started showing up in our local grocery stores. They are small, ugly and as hard on the outside as the pit is in the inside. And of course the price is outrageously high. With our global trading flourishing, they may have come from China.

Which reminds me of a story.

When we moved to Turkey, we asked our young driver, Ahmet Bey, to take us to a market that would be within walking distance of our flat but big enough to contain a fairly broad range of foodstuffs. Many of the little markets around town were mom-and-pop kind of stores called "bakkals" and were nothing more than a tiny hole in the wall with very limited food choices. Ahmet located the kind of market we wanted and he took us there about the third day after we got situated in our flat. We managed to get what we needed in the "canned goods" department, and then in moseying over to the fruit and vegetable section our eyeballs just about fell out of their sockets. It was as if the Turks waited until the last moment to pick their fruit and vegetables. Everything was HUGE! Heads of cabbage were the size of a soccer ball. Onions were double the size of any I have ever seen. And oh, the peaches. They were the size of our grapefruits -- and so beautiful and ready to eat that we could hardly take our eyes off them.

Anyway, Jerry and I stood there and carried on about these beautiful peaches. But as we were discussing and making over them, Ahmet quietly pulled Jerry aside and said, "Mr. Title, may I tell you something?" After Jerry gave him permission, a process we always had to go through with Ahmet Bey, he advised Jerry that their was a Turkish word that sounds like the English word for "peach" and in Turkish it meant "bastard." He advised that all the people in the store were laughing because we kept describing their "seftali" as bastards.

Jerry could hardly contain his glee as he relayed to me what Ahmet had told him. Ahmet was looking mightily embarrassed, and while the mistake struck Jerry and me so funny, we knew if we laughed Ahmet would be even more embarrassed. So we simply thanked him for advising us of the mighty faux pas. We quickly paid for our bastards and headed for home.