Found the Pineapple

And now for a what seems to be a love letter or something to pineapples...

I love pineapples. Always have, okay, not always but they are rapidly becoming a staple in my life and honestly, I love it. Where did my fascination with the delicious golden fruit start? Let's take a trip back to July 7, 2006. It was 10 on a Friday night, the TV was turned to USA Network. A new show was starting that night right after Monk. This show was Psych. Anyone who is a fan of Psych knows where I'm going with this. That episode, the Pilot, the one that started it all, had a moment in it that started the subconscious integration of the pineapple into my life. In the episode, James Roday who played Shawn improvised by picking up a pineapple and saying, "Should I slice this up for the road?" This moment sparked something. From episode 1, there was a pineapple in every Psych episode. That beautiful fruit that I would come to love and cherish was a key part in one of my favorite shows. My fascination with finding the pineapple was off and on for a while. Fast forward to about two years ago, when I picked the show back up again in Season 7 because it had been a while. Things had happened in the show while I was off flitting around and trying to not drown in school. But the one constant besides random media references, Lassie's sarcasm, and Shawn and Gus' flare for the hilarious, was the pineapple. I could always count on the pineapple. When Psych the musical came out I started really paying attention to the things Shawn and Gus said. "I heard it both ways" and the pineapple started making a huge comeback in my life. The pineapple making the biggest comeback.

I went to a painting class with my mom and someone I knew from Girl Scouts. It was one of those classes where they lead you through when to mix something, where to put your brush, etc. We were painting these flower things and I had a big area with nothing in it. So it painted a pineapple. This pineapple looked great. I like it. It was a nice painting with flowers and a pineapple. That painting is currently hanging up in my room.

Fast forward to about five months ago, I started figuring my scent thing out then. Like actually thinking it over. It was before summer really started. I was walking through Publix when I smelled that sweet scent that called to me. It was a pineapple at it's peak. I got that pineapple and when it got cut up and I could eat it, it was just as sweet as its scent. So I started sniffing the pineapples, and strawberries, and while I didn't always get a pineapple, it was nice to search for a ripe one. Psych had ended earlier that fall and I was rewatching the show from the beginning. "I found the pineapple" became a regular saying for me. Around that time, the pineapple was also becoming an actual trend, or maybe it always was and I never noticed. I was suddenly seeing pineapples everywhere. Pineapples ingrained themselves into my head and subconscious.

At some point this past summer, I came home for the weekend from my summer job at camp. Over that weekend, I went to the H Mart with my mom and as luck would have it, there was a display of pineapples in front of the store. I walked by and that all to familiar sweet scent danced through the air. I stopped and spent the next five minutes sniffing the pineapples to find that one scent. I brought it back to camp with me. I walked through the office door, pineapple in hand and got some strange looks from my coworkers. The cook cut it up for me and once again it was as sweet as it's scent.

At some point, my dad took the tops of the pineapples and planted them into pots. They're still alive and growing. So we have two pineapples (that I've named Fred and George- which one is which changes often). I also got a bottle of pineapple juice and sat outside next to Fred and George sipping my pineapple juice. I recently picked up cooking and was experimenting with shrimp for a while. One of those times I was cooking shrimp, I got out the small bottle of pineapple extract we had and threw some of it into the skillet with the shrimp, tasted good. I bought a few shirts online, one of them had a pineapple on it.

School rolls around and I'm on yearbook staff again. We were trying to figure out the cover and I was wearing my pineapple shirt that day. So naturally, I say "Pineapple." My yearbook adviser agreed with me to a degree. Seriously just a pineapple on the front, that would be an awesome yearbook. So that was my thing for a while, pineapples for the yearbook. 

Now that it's fall, the pineapples are out of season. I have one last bottle of pineapple juice before I stop eating and drinking pineapples until the spring. The pineapple won't leave me that easily though. I have a feeling that wonderful tropical fruit will always make a comeback in my life, stranger things have happened. Sanders out.