Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this.

I'm standing in the kitchen. I decide to get myself a snack. I take at least one bite of the nectarine. Juice runs out of the ripe, sweet fruit, so I grab a paper towel to wrap around the bottom while I eat it.

And then I get distracted. Beth has a question about something, and I move to a different room, and then I go do something else, and 20 minutes later I'm standing in the kitchen again, staring at the fruit bowl.


Wasn't I eating a nectarine? I ask myself. Where did it go?

I look all over the kitchen, but I see no bitten-into nectarine. Just virgin nectarines still in the bowl. I check the living room, the bathroom, the bookshelf--anywhere I may have absentmindedly placed my snack.

Did I eat the whole thing without noticing it?

I check the garbage cans, but I see no nectarine pits sitting right on top, and I'm not about to go digging into the depths to see if a fresh, slimy nectarine pit wrapped in a paper towel happens to have slid down into the bottom.

I look all over, but I can't find my nectarine.

Thus, I can draw one of three possible conclusions:

• At the ripe old age of 27, my memory is already so bad that I can eat an entire nectarine and then, within minutes, completely forget having done so.

• I am way tireder than I realized and I am actually now hallucinating. And my hallucinations involve biting into ripe fruit (and getting towels to wipe up the imaginary juice).

• There is a half-eaten nectarine rotting somewhere in my house.

I don't think I like any of those options.