Childhood Trauma

I am not sure if everyone here is familiar with the Granny Apple phenomenon that seemed to sweep the nation (or at least Vermont) when I was little. Every autumn at school we would hike through the woods to an orchard about 1/2 a mile away and pick apples. This was fine. Lovely. Apple-cheeked children picking apple-cheeked apples.



We would then take said apples to our classrooms. Each kid got one apple. You peeled it and then carved the fuck out of it with a knife. Then you put it in the oven. When it emerged it looked like the wizened face of a spooky old lady. Then you took cotton balls or some other stuff to make old lady hair and some calico fabric to make it a dress.

I am SURE some of you out there have done this, either at school or with a sick and twisted babysitter or parent.

It is scary enough pulling shrunken granny heads out of the oven, but then you are supposed to dress and cherish it, as if you were the young Norman Bates; as if what you have in your arms is NOT a ROTTING PIECE OF FRUIT. I once kept mine until it turned completely black.

I am sure Martha and Elnie and I did this at Oberlin once. Did we? Was I high? On the off chance I wasn't I am going to retroactively smoke up now (at work) to somehow excuse myself from any responsibility for that ever happening.



LOOK at it. Look at the eyes. Squinting and small from a lifetime of piecework under dim gaslight. The mouth slightly agape and the nose red and shriveled from years of secret drinking. The crazy green hair does not help either.





So, real-life old women or cunningly executed Granny Apples?