For years, my bride and her parents have been telling me about durian, a fruit that has a unique, and according to my bride and her mother, an overpowering stench. Her dad, on the other hand, has always been kind of "it's not so bad...," which, given the visceral reaction of the other two, is kind of surprising. I figured it must be one of those love it/hate it kind of things. But I couldn't figure out just from the stories which side of the fence I'd be on. After all, my Bride likes to eat things like chickens' feet, and anything with tamarind in it, so who knew if she could be trusted? Last weekend, on our monthly run to Manchester's China town, I was in one of the Chinese grocers for an unsupervised moment, and found a durian calling to me from a dark corner. I took it to the counter and found, as the lady rang me up, that the price on the sticker (four pounds sterling or so) was per pound... so I ended up paying about $30 to take this thing home with me. My bride rolled her eyes, and insisted that I park the durian outside, on the front step, to prevent the stench from pervading the house. They sell them partially frozen, so the smell is kept down. But you can see from the signs posted in Asian airports and bus stations that it is seriously not something to be trifled with.The Critter, however, was totally with me, and promised that she wanted to try this strange looking thing as well. After a couple of days of half-forgetting the spiky monstrosity on my doorstep, I finally cut it open and took a peek inside. The flesh is a kind of creamy, mild yellow, with a few golf-ball sized seeds throughout. And though it had never developed too much of a pervading odor while it was outside, it definitely released a stronger smell once it was cut open. I poked at it tentatively with a finger, and the smell grew decidedly stronger. Scooping out a bit of the flesh with my fingers, I kind of sniffed it a bit, and let the Critter smell it. It was strong, and pungent, but hard to describe. It wasn't aggressively bad, but it wasn't something I'd be using in my dresser drawers to freshen up my linens. The texture felt kind of like a soft, over-ripe mango. And hey, I like mangoes. So I gave it a try. It tasted like a combination of wet fermenting onions and the damp gym sock I forgot in the bag for two months. With perhaps a little Pure Evil thrown in, just for spice. I spit it out and spent the next five minutes scraping my tongue with anything I could find that would get the taste out of my mouth. Like gravel from the driveway. The Critter, God love her, saw my reaction (and her mother doubled over in laughter on the ground at the look on my face) and still tried a piece herself. She ran screaming from the house and we haven't seen her since. If you see her, please have her call home. That damned fruit cost the best part of $30, and I hate to see it go to waste.

More scenes I hope to see as my life flashes before my eyes, numbers 51-75: 51. Hearing the Critter sing along from the back seat. 52. KOA in October. 53. Dancing in a kilt 54. Buying fresh swordfish in the market in Sicily through grunts and hand gestures. 55. Asking my future father-in-law for his daughter's hand after watched the new James Bond movie 56. Figuring out that fingerling potatoes taste just like regular potatoes. 57. Dancing to Ray Charles with the Critter. 58. Camping in the redwoods with Giuia. 59. Climbing in the hayloft at the barn. 60. Drinking Guinness at the brewery 61. Holding my bride's hand when she woke up from surgery. 62. Standing in line to see Minnie Mouse. 63. Catching lightning bugs. 64. Making Squirmy laugh for the first time. 65. Winter road trip to Canada 66. The sound of crickets on a hot summer's day in Blue Ridge, Georgia 67. Playing rummy with the aunts & uncles at Christmas time 68. The early morning splash of cold seawater at kayaking class 69. Making clay spaceships with my brother 70. Dogsledding in Alaska 71. Eating with my Father, the doctor, at Arby's in one of Atlanta's worst neighborhoods after his hospital rounds 72. Squeezing over a hundred people into our house for a Christmas party 73. Doing the money game with >35 kids under the age of 6 74. Finding the ancestral home at Cashel, Ireland 75. Winning first place in the 2'6" jumper competition on that pain-in-the-ass shetland pony. For more, go here or here. Or see the inspiration.

As mentioned, my Bride and I have been pursuing medical intervention to ensure we don't propogate the species any further. Between the Critter and Squrimy, we've replaced ourselves in the gene pool, and we figure we can be done and feel good about it. Though it took several months of effort, I finally had managed to get on the schedule for the clinic, where a doctor was due to get intimate enough with my intimates to perform the operation. I don't know how odd it is, but the night before, my Bride asked me if I was having any second thoughts about the operation or the lasting effects, and gave me the opportunity to opt out if I was. It was awfully sweet of her, but having been woken up on a Saturday morning at 5:30 am by Squirmy, because he thought it was time that someone came and played with him for a while, I was pretty set on going through with it. Here in the UK, our local NHS hospital schedules these things in groups, on a Sunday once a month or so. Ever been to your local suburban hospital on a Sunday morning? We did a double take in the parking lot, because there were so few cars there. The halls of the hospital were empty, with only the sound of a radio playing in somebody's distant office telling us there was anyone around. It was very 28 Days Later. We followed the sound of music (which was playing, I kid you not: Me and Mrs. Jones) and found a sign, propped up in the hallway, and a bunch of men kind of hunched over in their chairs, staring at their shoes. About two out of three men had a woman with them, presumably their wife or partner. Unfailingly, the woman was smiling and laughing. One guy had two women with him, about the same age. Which made me wonder if he had a particularly supportive sister, or what, exactly? About a half an hour later, I met the smiling doctor (male) and a bevy of nurses (female), who came in one after the other to tell me to disrobe, or to check if I was ok once I was disrobed, and if I had the right underwear to put on after I was done being disrobed, and to tell me I had a beautiful baby while I was lying there, disrobed (which seemed a little ironic, given where I was). After the third visit from one of these nurses while I was lying on the hosptital bed in my socks and my t-shirt, reading a Star Wars novel in an attempt to distract myself (what a dead sexy mental picture I paint, eh?), the doctor came in and punched me in the crotch. "HolysweetmotherofGod" "Did that hurt?" "Um. A bit." "Ok, well, at least we've established your sensitivity level. [read: pansy-boy]I'll use more anesthetic before I do the other side." Ah. Fun. The other side. If it hadn't been for the four months of wait to get this appointment, I would have considered saying let's stop here, and I'll come back another time to finish the other half of the job. To his credit, it did feel like he put a couple of paper towels around his knuckles before he punched me in the crotch again. But then the nurses let me put my clothes back on, and gave me a cup of tea. Which is the British version of pity. An hour later, I was on my couch at home, with all the tylenol I wanted and a bag of frozen corn to soothe my pride. But on the way out of the clinic, I took this picture of an "out of order" sign on one of the emergency kits in the wall: