Fermentation

I moved back in with my dad after my divorce, and the experience was good for both of us. He was less lonely, and I certainly was. One feature of my father's taste that will always stay in my memory was his fondness for pineapple-grapefruit juice. He always had some on hand. To lengthen its refrigerator life, he would pour it out of the can it came in and into a glass bottle with a screw-on cap. That way, it never tasted like the can, and was easier to pour.

Not long after I moved back home, I introduced him to Laura Haskell, and they were constant companions until she died. When she got sick with cancer, he moved to her house to care for her and left me to take care of our house. Me and the pineapple-grapefruit juice.

Trouble is, I didn't care for pineapple-grapefruit juice. It sat in the fridge for a long while, unmolested by me. I never drank it. I never opened it.

One day I came home from work, opened the fridge and found the result of the life threatening disaster that I had averted. The juice bottle had exploded. The juice had fermented, generating gas pressure inside the sealed bottle and on that particular day, the pressure exceeded the bottle's strength and an explosion occurred inside the refrigerator.

Tiny shards of glass were stuck to the inside of the fridge, glued on by dried juice. The shards covered much of the refrigerator walls, and all of the other items within. It was a horrible mess, and I took great care cleaning it up as the shards were tiny and very sharp.

I have thought many times in the years that have past what would have become of me if fate had dealt me a very bad hand and I had opened the fridge at the moment of critical mass. And I shudder. And I am thankful.