After Seamus’ hit play was over, a group of us went out for drinks to recap the highlights of his theatrical debut. During the play, there were some young kids in the audience who kept shouting to their mother who was performing on stage. Later on, as we sat in the bar, conversation soon led to the topic of children who aren’t quite as cute as they, or their parents, think they are. I took a sip of my scotch and soda, and decided it was time to share the tale of a boy who would come to be known as the Crabapple Kid.
It all began on one of those insufferably long days at work, where nothing seemed to be going right. The project I had been working on for two weeks was scrapped, and the one I had let slide was now top priority, and consequently overdue. It was cold and rainy, and if one more oblivious suburban tourist nearly poked my eye out with her umbrella, I felt like I might have to shave my head and turn vigilante, à la Travis Bickle.
I just wanted to sit on the train, stare out the window, and think about what I might eat for dinner. But that wasn’t meant to be.
I took the only seat that was available, which was behind a young woman and her son, who was probably about four years old. He was a chatty and overly animated boy, probably the kind who would end up taking theatre classes in school, and later perform in hit plays at the local church.
Normally, I love kids. I am charmed by them, and enjoy their company. But not that day. That day, I just wanted to sit on the train, stare out the window, and think about what I might eat for dinner. Alas, the boy had other plans for us.
As soon as the train left the station, he knelt on the seat, and turned around to face me. He then attempted to engage me in the babbling conversation of a four year old, his gibberish broken only by bursts of coughing. I stared blankly into his button eyes, and watched helplessly as he interrupted the steady stream of fluid trailing from his nose by wiping it on the back of his chubby hand.
Avert your eyes, Jenny. Ignore him and he’ll go away.
Finally, he began to trace the outline of my ticket with his moist fingers. I looked up and politely smiled, assuming his mother would tell him to sit down and leave the nice lady alone. But she didn’t, because she believed, incorrectly, that her son was the most adorable creature I had ever seen in my life.
Perhaps fatigued by the sustained loss of vital bodily fluids from his pug nose, he eventually sat down and directed his energy toward kicking the seat in front of him instead of contaminating my monthly pass with the croup. His mother tried to entertain him with storybooks and Highlights Magazines, but he wasn’t interested. When he spoke, it was in a baby talk voice that was at least a year too young for him.
“I’m hungwy. Can I have my apple, Mommy?”
His mother reached into her backpack and pulled out the tiniest apple I had ever seen. It was clearly the kind that was not meant for eating, but intended to be baked into a pie or boiled down into applesauce. This was the kind of apple that came in ten-pound bags, was all banged up, and was perpetually on sale for $2.99 a bushel. The kind of apple your Polish great-grandmother might offer you as dessert, but only because the dementia had recently set in, and she was convinced that you were a gypsy.
The boy held the tiny mottled apple carefully in his hands, turning it round and round, inspecting it. Then, something caught his attention.
“Look Mommy. There’s a bwown spot there.”
And unlike 99.9% of the normal population who would have avoided the wormhole and simply eaten around it, our modern day Johnny Appleseed decided to sink his soft baby teeth directly into the rotten part.
He held the apple out, and said, “Mommy. Mommy. Mommy! Look! I eated the bwown spot! No more spot!”
His voice lilted with a singsong cadence that made my ears start to itch. I watched as he proudly chomped into the apple with exaggerated head movements, leaving a trail of dime-sized bites. With each dramatic nibble, he would look over at his mother, and then glance back at me, waiting for some sort of approval or applause.
At one point, I imagined myself snatching the half-eaten apple from his sticky paws and throwing it with all my might against the front of the car, laughing maniacally as its mealy innards exploded, raining down on all the unsuspecting commuters.
Thankfully, however, my stop was approaching, so I quickly retrieved my bacteria-laden ticket from its clip and hopped out of my seat, trying once again to focus on what I might eat for dinner.
As I shared this story with my friends, and pantomimed the boy’s dramatic fruit consumption, Natasha was particularly taken with the image of the tiny apple. As we continued discussing it, I realized that we had created yet another new catch phrase: crabapple kid.

crabapple kid, krab’-apl kid, n. A child who tries to be overly precious, or works too hard at being adorable; one who is deserving only of wormy crabapples.

For the rest of the weekend, we kept trying out our new expression on each other, looking for different contexts in which to use it.
“Nat, your kids are gonna be so rotten that your biography will be called, Natasha Crabapple and the Crabapple Dumpling Gang!”
“Shut up! Your grubby children are gonna have to rob banks to pay for all their wormy apples. And then they’ll make a movie based on your life called, Jenny Cassidy and the Crabapple Kid!”
“Ooh, good one. Oh wait, remember when your daughter was in that boxing movie? What the heck was that called? Oh yeah – Million Dollar Crabapple Kid!”
Then Nat started testing out our new catch phrases in combination:
“Damn, Jenny! Why’d you go and have so many nasty crabapple kids? What, were you walking the squirrel or something?”
After two straight days of this, the mere thought of an apple would throw us into hysterical fits of laughter. Farnsworth reluctantly joined us for dinner and a movie on Sunday night, fearing he would have to endure another few hours of crabapple themed insults. We made it through the meal like civilized human beings, and therefore felt deserving of dessert. Nat agreed to split the mango cheesecake with me, and Farnsworth asked what the sorbet of the day was.
The waiter folded his arms behind his back, and said, “Well, tonight we have coconut, raspberry, and green apple.”
I paused a moment, and exhaled slowly before looking over at Natasha, who already had tears welling in her eyes. She didn’t make a sound, but just stared down at her plate, her shoulders heaving from suppressed laughter.
I leaned over to Farnsworth and whispered, “Don’t mind her. Your girlfriend’s just walking the squirrel again.”

Filed under: General on April 15th, 2005