Cucumbers

          Mom would cook everything from scratch. She was an old fashioned
    Mom. One of the main ingredients to her cooking were cucumbers.
    She had cucumbers in her meatloaf and made her own zucchini. We ate
    cucumbers with our school lunch. I loved cucumber sandwiches and
    would munch on pickles mom had preserved. I'm coming up on an anniversary:
    the day I discovered what my sister liked most about cucumbers.
          I was home early from classes and cut a slice of zwieback. There
    was a bowl of  uncut zucchini on the kitchen table. As I headed down the hall
    I could hear strange sounds from the bathroom. The bathroom door had the only
    dead lock bolt inside the house. The other interior doors used a skeleton key.
    I sneaked a peek through the keyhole and spotted my sister using a cucumber
    in a way that never occurred to me. It put me off cucumbers. Mom was disappointed
    to see my distaste for them. But, it started me thinking about women and food.
    I had never considered food to be erotic.
          My sister had talked about how uncomfortable she felt when boys flirted
    with her. She especially dreaded losing her virginity. But, I knew she had loss it.
    She talked about boys and how creepy it was to be stared at by them.
    Sunday dinner would always include sliced zucchini. Dad would say grace in Latin.
    Watching everyone devouring the meal with zucchini was profane. I wondered
    what my sister did with the zucchini she used in the bathroom. Did she wash it
    off and put it with the others in the kitchen? She loved to munch on pickles too.
    I could never get enough courage to tell mom.
          When I grocery shop I have to check out the women picking through the
    cucumbers. There are long slender ones and fat ones and curved ones;
    cucumbers that is. This is natural behavior for girls in puberty: zucchini fetish.
    What better way to loosen up? Maybe someone has written about this too.
    Its okay now for a bride not be a virgin on her wedding night. But, how many
    of them have loss their virginity to a cucumber?

    (Y)