Deceptive Fruit

Several years ago, the sport of Masters Swimming went through a "clever T-shirt" phase, where competitors wore slogans and illustrations proclaiming their pride in still being involved in the sport even though they were "past their prime". Most of the graphics contained wheelchairs, wrinkly guys wearing Mr. Magoo glasses and walking with canes, piles of bedpans, and other cliché trappings of life in the geriatric care unit. The slogans were either in the "There may be snow on the rooftop, but there's still fire in the furnace" genre, or more along the lines of "I cain't swim until I've had my rheumatiz medicine."

We no longer define ourselves this way. Nowadays, there are a lot of older swimmers who just flat go FAST, and have no need for humorous T-shirts to explain their inadequacy. But a few decades ago, it was not at all uncommon.

One shirt I saw at several swim meets proclaimed the following: "Experience, deceit, and treachery can defeat youth and skill." I don't know whether the guys who wore those shirts actually utilized such underhanded methods to achieve victories, but I doubt it. The only actual instances of swim meet deceit and/or treachery I have personally witnessed were back in my days with the Wichita Swim Club.

The most famous of those was when Glenn Nyberg positioned himself at the end of the pool during one of Mike Ulffers' races and raised his arm in the official "he's disqualified!" gesture as if he were one of the designated stroke judges. The referee saw the motion and duly recorded Mike's primary competitor as being deeked. I'm not sure whether there was any kind of protest, but the DQ stood, and Mike won the race. Glenn, who was already pretty well-known for his irreverent shenanigans, immediately saw his bad-boy reputation elevated to legendary status.

A less publicized (and less successful) example of aquatic dishonesty was, I'm sad to say, perpetrated by my own brother. It was in the 400 Freestyle heats at the Regional Championships, which happened to be at our own pool in Wichita that year. Pat was seeded as the slowest swimmer in his heat, and through the first 200 meters of the race, appeared to be performing as expected. I was sitting in the stands to watch him swim, but was also talking with my pals and not paying close attention to the pool. Suddenly someone shouted "look at Pat!", and our attention was drawn back to the race. My brother had gone from lagging in last place to suddenly be in contention to win the heat! Everyone started yelling and cheering for him, encouraging this spectacular comeback. I don't remember if he ended up winning the heat or not, but regardless -- we had just witnessed an unprecedented burst of speed that resulted in an amazing finish! His final time was at least a dozen seconds faster than anyone had thought he could go.

When Pat got out of the pool, we all gathered around to share our appreciation and sense of wonder over his surprising performance. As we heaped praise upon him, he had an unexpected look of confusion on his face. He raised an eyebrow and said "What are you talking about? Weren't you watching?"

"Sure, man, we saw you finish! You came from SO far back! Nice job!"

"Um...you weren't really watching, then. I flipped in the middle of the pool, guys. I only swam about 350 meters. I cheated." Oops. "I was really hurting, and didn't want to swim the whole thing. I knew I'd be disqualified."

Only...he wasn't. Apparently, none of the judges or timers had been paying that much attention either. They posted his official time as if he'd actually swum as fast as we originally thought he had. He might even have been in line to receive an award.

Unlike Glenn, though, Pat immediately hurried over to the officials' table and confessed. There may have been consequences beyond disqualification too, but I don't remember what those might have been. But victory was not among the results achieved.

So what does this all have to do with fruit, you ask?

Just this: among the mostly-honorable members of the citrus food community, there lurks a deceitful villain whose lies and falsehoods need to be exposed -- the vile and evil pummelo!

Up until a week ago, I had never heard of this particular variety of fruit. But King Soopers had a big cardboard box full of them sitting out in the middle of the floor near the banana display, bearing a large poster that said "Pummelos — $.50/pound"! Fifty cents a pound for any kind of citrus fruit seems like a serious bargain; most oranges, grapefruits, etc, go for 3 to 4 times that much. I saw these greenish yellow orbs sitting there in the box and thought, "I have no idea what these things are, but you gotta have some adventure in your life, don't you?" I picked one up and tossed it in my grocery cart.

You can probably follow my reasoning: "The thing is as big as a large grapefruit. In fact, it looks kinda like a grapefruit. It's cheaper than a grapefruit, though, which probably means that they are desperate to get rid of them, which means it probably tastes like a car battery. Still, it's gotta be healthy (since it's fruit), and my taste buds aren't all that discriminating: I can probably choke it down. And who knows? Maybe it'll taste like gummi bears and I'll be the hero of the neighborhood for discovering this heretofore-unknown taste treat!"

The good news is that it wasn't all that nasty to eat. In fact, it tasted pretty much like a regular grapefruit. But the bad news is that fifty cents a pound isn't much of a bargain when the majority of each pound is contained in the weight of the rind. I couldn't believe it when I cut into the thing; though the entire fruit was nearly the size of a soccer ball, the edible portion wasn't much bigger than a plum. It took me 5 minutes of cutting, tearing, and peeling to release the imprisoned food, and no more than 30 seconds to eat it all.

I suppose that this rind surplus actually makes the pummelo a fabulous diet food. You expend 100 calories jackhammering it open, and only consume 50 when you eat it. And if you don't want to eat it, I suppose you could lose even more weight by tossing it around like a medicine ball. So please don't get me wrong here -- I'm not on any kind of anti-pummelo crusade or anything. I just want you to warn you that when it comes to fruit, it's the same as it is with people: You can't judge what's inside merely by measuring the outside diameter.

Words to live by, my friends. Have a great day!