I'm here to talk about...

Cherries.

Of the maraschino type.

The cherry-on-top type.

The not-a-sundae-without-one type.

This type.

(Tired of the word 'type'. The more you look at it the weirder it gets.)

To begin at the beginning, my mom always told me as a young child that if you buried one of these in the yard, it would never decompose. It would just sit there for years and eons and get redder and redder. You could dig it up on your 50th birthday and it would still be just the same. So why, she urged, would you want to put such a thing into your intestines?

Well, gee, mom, I dunno. 'Cause it's red and sugary and kind of glows?

So for years I was afraid to eat them. And then one day in a fit of rebellion I chose not only to put some on my plate along with the canned fruit cocktail at a church potluck, but to actually *eat* the diabolical intestine-shredders.

Whaddya know. They do taste like anti-freeze.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love maraschino cherries. I've even been known to eat them straight from the never-ending jar when life gets really bad.

That's another thing. Pretty sure we've never actually bought a jar of cherries, but there are always some lurking in the back of the fridge somewhere. Pretty sure there's an exception to an expiration date law somewhere, "And lo, when the party of the first part putteth in place ye olde date stamp on him jar of fruiten, him be not requirethed to put such on any holding place of such cherries of the maraschino kind. For behold, they are everlasting and die not. Neither do they fade, but grow ever redder and redder, to the end of the age. Amen."

(Always knew I had it in me to be a lawyer.)

Not only do they never die, but we don't actually know where they come from. Are they real cherries? Or the result of a lucky accident in a nuclear power plant somewhere in communist-oppressed Ukraine?

They're like zombies or vampires or something. Maraschino cherries are the undead of the condiment world. I wonder if that rubs off on you or kills you when you eat them. By putting this in my mouth, am I removing years to my life or adding them?

So much to consider. I think I’ll bury one of these marvelous inventions in the yard and get back to you in 30 years.