Once upon a time there was a little lemon named Lybert. He lived in a supermarket with his relatives who had come from the same tree.
There were all kinds of fruit and vegetables displayed in the supermarket, but there were only a few lemons. People came into the fruit market everyday, but few of them ever bought lemons.
Lybert was unhappy. “Why do so few people like us?” he wondered. “Maybe it’s because we are bitter.”
He became more sour and bitter than he normally would be. “I have had enough. I am going to become something else instead!”
Carefully, Lybert rolled himself over the edge of the display counter and found himself among the yellow bell peppers. Oh how beautiful they looked with their yellow, shiny skins. No wonder people liked them. They really had something to be spicy and puffed up about.
When Lybert asked them what made them so popular, they just shook their seeds and rolled their eyes.
“Don’t you know we have sunshine locked up inside us? What a silly lemon. You don’t know anything,” they jeered.
That made Lybert feel really embarrassed for asking.
“Oh I wish I was as smart and beautiful as a pepper,” moaned Lybert. He did everything he could do to look like a pepper. He polished his skin until is shone and he sucked in his breath until his cheeks puffed out. He sat there for so long pretending to be a yellow pepper that he almost fainted.
Then a woman came into the marked with a little boy. He ran around the market knocking things off the shelves. One of the peppers fell to the floor and broke open. Lybert gasped. He could not believe his eyes. There was nothing but seeds inside the pepper! No sunshine. No anything.
“It was all a bluff,” Lybert thought. “They are just thin-skinned, beautiful looking things, filled with air. And they break with the first bump they get.” Lybert determined never, no never, to be a puffy pepper.
The first chance he got, he rolled up to the banana section of the market.
“Oh?” questioned the banana. “Just what do you think you are doing by being with US!?”
The bananas were so stiff and formal that the little lemon barely had the courage to reply. When he did, it came rushing out all at once.
“I don’t want to be a lemon. I want to be just like you. I want to be tall and straight and… and…as yellow as I can be,” he stammered. “I want people to like me and choose me because I am the best yellow banana in the whole world.”
“You can never be like us,” sneered the biggest banana. “Why just look at your tiny size. And you are round! Who ever heard of a round banana? No, sorry. You just don’t have it in you.”
With that, all the bananas turned their shiny yellow backs towards Lybert. They huddled up with their heads together in a bunch, chuckling and laughing.
Lybert just ignored them. He straightened out his little round tummy and tried to poke up his bumpy head so he would look taller. He stayed like that for the longest time. But it was so tiring for a lemon to look like a banana.
Just when he thought he could do it no more, a mother and her baby came into the market and stopped at the banana stall. The baby was fussing and unhappy so the mother took a banana from the stack, peeled it and gave her baby a small piece. Lybert’s mouth dropped open in shock.
White! The banana was all white inside. It was only pretending to be yellow by hiding in a yellow skin and making everyone else feel bad because they weren’t yellow.
Lybert tried to tell the other bananas what he thought about them but they all had turned their yellow backs to him and were pretending they didn’t notice they had been caught in their lie.
“Oh!” Lybert said as a tear ran down his thick skin, “I do not want to be banana either.” With all his energy he rolled down to the dairy produce isle to hide.
“Hey! Look what we found,” the surprised eggs were all excited. “An egg pretending he is a lemon! That’s a real crack-up. Where did you get the cool costume?”
“I am a lemon,” Lybert was surprised to hear himself say. But privately he thought, “And I guess I’ll have to be one the rest of my life.”
“Liar, liar. Your shell’s on fire!” They all screamed and pulled the lids down to cover their egg box while they peered, sneered and pointed their little fingers through the slots in the sides.
Lybert was more embarrassed than ever for being a lemon. He looked around the cooler and everything he saw was white. White cream, white eggs, white frozen yogurt, and white ice cream.
“I shall roll into the freezer until I turn white with frost,” he thought. He waited until a customer opened the freezer section and reached inside. Then Lybert tried to squeeze past him, but fell into the fresh fish cooler instead.
Are lemons always this silly?” asked a big cod fish with blue staring eyes who had been watching everything that Lybert had been doing.
“What do you mean?” shivered Lybert.
“Well I watched you try to be a pepper because you thought they were having more fun than you. Truth is they are so thin-skinned and hollow that they were jealous because you have more sunshine in you than they ever could have.”
“Then you tried to be a banana because you thought they were stronger, smarter and more yellow than you. But they are just soft, white mush inside. Would you really want to be as spongy and pulpy as they are?”
The fish continued his cold commentary. “And why would you want to be white like those eggheads? Didn’t you know deep down inside they are yellow too? The just don’t have the courage to come out and say it.”
Before he could even think about an answer, Lybert felt a big hand grab him and pull him out of the cooler. It was the market manager. “Who put this lemon in the fish cooler?” he called. The he wiped it off in his apron and placed it back with the other lemons.
Lybert thought about his experiences. He didn’t want to be a pepper filled with nothing but pride. He didn’t want to be a soft banana. He didn’t want to be an that egg that hid his true colour. And he most definitely didn’t want to be white. It was too cold.
He thought about what the big cod fish had said for a long time before he asked his relatives.
“What are lemons good for?”
They all looked at Lybert in surprise.
“What are lemons good for? Oh, Lybert, you have so much to learn! Lemons are the most special fruit there is. Did you know that no matter what flavour another fruit has, it will always taste better when you add a bit of lemon?”
“Lemons are used for drinks when nothing else will quench your thirst. Lemons make the best pies that you will ever taste, the finest Chinese food, the tastiest candy and when they are mature, they become sweet.”
Lybert did not hear anything more after the word, “mature.” That’s what he wanted to be! Then he would know everything and not act so silly. Oh, how he longed to be mature.
Late that afternoon everyone was excited to see Monsieur Le Grand Chef come to the market. He was the owner of the finest gourmet restaurant at grandest hotel in the city. Everybody knew Monsieur Le Grand Chef always picked the very best, fresh fruit and vegetables available. When he picked one and used it in his restaurant, each and every fruit that was grown in the same field or in the same orchard would forever be favoured above all others. People everywhere would say, “These are the type of grapes Monsieur Le Grande Chef uses.” Or, “These are the only type of olives that Monsieur Le Grande Chef ever uses.” That would mean your fruit or vegetable would be popular and famous forever.
Lybert had no time for such day-dreaming. His only thoughts were, “How might I become what I was really meant to be?”
Everyone else at the market watched as Monsieur Le Grande Chef walked up and down the rows of vegetable and past the fruit tables over flowing with produce. Every vegetable and fruit stood up straight and tall trying very hard to be noticed.
The water spray had made all the produce look fresh and shiny, but Monsieur La Grande Chef was wise to that trick. He felt the stiffness or pinched the crispness of each variety. He smelt the aroma and checked the colours. But still his cart was empty.
Then he stopped at the lemons. Carefully he picked out one that looked different than the others. When he tested the fruit his eyes squinted, his lip quivered just a tiny bit and then he breathed in with all the breath he could.
“Such a rare lemon, with a strong, sour and bitter balance,” he exclaimed. “It is cool to the touch, spicy like a pepper, and very, very yellow, like the sunshine. Its shape is taller than it is round, yet it has the distinct scent of ocean air. Never have I found such a gem before. Monsieur La Manager, please? Why do you hide these from me for so long?”
Of course, it was Lybert.
And with that, Monsieur La Grande Chef bought all the lemons that were on display.
-Doug Garrett