MARCH 11: The Fig
“I’m mad,” said the Fig.
“What are you mad about?” asked the Apple.
The Fig and the Apple were in the fruit dish together, along with an orange or two and a bunch of grapes.
“What are you mad about?” the rest of the fruit asked.
“Yes, you’d better tell us,” said the Apple. “I’m sure it will make you feel much, much better.”
“I don’t know whether it will or not,” said the Fig.
“Why don’t you think it will?” asked the Apple.
“Because it might make me cry, and some one might call me a cry baby.”
“My dear Fig,” said the Apple, “no one could ever call you a cry baby, because even if you cried you’re not a baby.”
“But I’ve heard big boys and big girls called cry babies, and they weren’t babies,” said the Fig.
“All very true,” said the Apple, “but they behaved as babies and once they had been babies. That is, each one of them had once been a baby. It would have been impossible for them to have been more than one baby I suppose.”
“We suppose so, too,” said the rest of the fruit, as it moved in the fruit dish a little.
“And,” continued the Apple, “they were behaving as though they hadn’t grown up into boys and girls by crying over some silly little thing.
“You see, Fig, you have never been a baby. You have been a little fig, but never a little baby. So you couldn’t be a cry baby, though you might be a cry fig, or a cry little fig. I’m not sure about that.”
“That wouldn’t sound so badly,” said the Fig. “I will have to tell you what has made me mad, and what may make me cry at any moment.”
“Tell us,” said the Apple.
“Imagine,” said the Fig, “I heard people speak of a person they knew was mean and horrid and unfair and all that was dreadful as not being worth a fig. Oh, that was cruel, cruel.”
“I am so glad you told the story,” said the Apple, “for you are being unhappy for no reason at all. When any one says that a person isn’t worth thinking about and he wouldn’t give a fig for that person, it doesn’t mean an insult to the family of figs, but is simply an expression people have used for a long, long time.” And the Fig was happy again.
But the Fig was more delighted when a lovely child came by the fruit dish and taking the Fig said, “I simply love figs.”