Before I tell this story, I think it’s important that you know that this is not my story, but that of my sister. It is only a presumption, a guess of sorts, of what went through her head as a child:

“It was the beginning a new school year and the trees were just starting to change colors; Fall was coming upon us. My mom, as usual, packed our lunches in efforts to make them healthy and sustainable. Oh well.

On the first day of this school year, I looked into my bagel lunch and my face fell. A shiny red apple stared back at me, whispering songs of death and despair into the void that only my ears could hear; through my ears had attenuated themselves into receivers of utter hatred uttered by the mouths of Honeycrisp and Fiji abominations…The kind teachers hold prized on their desks, like evil red beacons of knowledge. I hated red apples.
For months, all my mother knew was that each day I was leaving with an apple, and coming back without one. But eventually, I was found out, for there was a slight stench emenating from my locker.
“Mrs. Eljamal?” My mother received a call from the school a few months later. “It seems your daughter has been storing all of the apples from her lunches inside her locker. She refuses to eat them or throw them away.” Well of course; I did not want to waste them.
That was the day I returned home with my backpack full of apples.

It was definitely an Apple Day.”