I’m the Forrest Gump of apples.

My favorite desserts often involve apples. Apple pie, apple cobbler, apple crisp, apple tarts, baked apples, apple dumplings, stewed apples, apple danish, apple butter, apple kugel, applesauce, apple cake, apple cookies – especially those soft Archways… [sigh] I’m sort of the Forrest Gump of apples.

But my childhood was a frustrating one. My grandmother (I lived with my grandparents) was a great baker, and her pies and cobblers were delicious. Obviously I wanted apple pie and apple cobbler. Like, every meal.

But I had a problem: my grandfather preferred peaches. And since he had a job, his opinion carried more weight than mine. Which meant that while we often had pie and cobbler, it was rarely apple. For every five times we had peach, I might get what I wanted once.

Now, this wasn’t a tragedy, exactly. I didn’t dislike peaches. Peaches were fine. Peach cobbler was certainly better than no cobbler at all. It was just the principle of the thing. My mind never quite grasped how you’d prefer a second-tier fruit to the best of all possible fruits. Why would you eat chicken when you could be eating steak instead? Why would you drink Fanta when you could have Pepsi? Why would you play kickball when you could be playing baseball?

Why would you eat peaches when you could be eating apples? 

That’s why, my entire life, I have always resented peaches.