As I sat in the cramped office room, surrounded by anxious strangers and the sterile antiseptic smell, I knew something was about to change. My heart raced as I tried to control my breathing and tamp down the rising panic. I was seven years old and I was fully convinced that if I swallowed a cherry pit, a cherry tree would grow inside my stomach.
As a child, I always forgot to spit out the cherry pit. To prevent me from choking, my parents would tell me that if I swallowed a pit, a cherry tree would grow inside me. When you are seven years old, you believe everything your parents tell you with no skepticism at all. Ever since then, I have been very careful about spitting out cherry pits.
But no matter how careful you are, accidents always happen. One summer day, I was playing outside eating cherries and chasing butterflies when I suddenly felt something in my throat. It was the cherry I had been chewing on for the past few minutes. I ran to my parents crying hysterically as I tried to form coherent sentences through my tears. I told them that I swallowed a cherry pit and then immediately followed up with the question, “Is a tree going to grow inside of me? I don’t want to die”. My little seven-year-old self demanded my parents take me to the hospital.
At the doctor’s office, they told me that I was perfectly fine and a cherry tree would not be growing in my stomach even if I wanted it to. After hearing this, I looked at my parents with confusion. I wasn’t upset with them for lying to me, more so, I was relieved. I had been living in fear that my favorite fruit in the whole world would accidentally kill me. I was so excited to hear that I could eat cherries without any fear of a cherry tree growing in my stomach.
Looking back at this event, it makes me miss and reminisce about the naivety of being a little child. Learning about all the harmless little white lies our parents used to tell us and realizing how simple and easy life was. We grow, we learn, and we lose that sense of innocence. We face society and realize that life isn’t as simple as we imagined. In a sense, we are similar to cherry pits, we can’t grow in random environments, and we have to find one that is just right for us.