I’ve never really cared for fruit salad-I’m more of a veggies guy. However there was a time in my life, this summer, when I had to eat from the forbidden fruit (salad) to resist the temptation of someone else. During July and most of August I went to a liberal arts camp in Maine, one with very overactive hormones. We bestowed upon it the loving nick-name Camp Caligula. The awkward encounters that lay ahead were numerous,but perhaps this was the most memorable.

By the third day of camp everyone had been administered a significant other, and the rest of our time at camp was spent hanging off this person’s every thought and action. I have a word for this, one that cannot be printed in the paper. Indiana Jones carried one, and this is what we were.

By the start of the second week at camp, I knew that my partner couldn’t cut it. She liked to yell. In my ear. Alot. So I decided, it was back to square one, or was it? I was beginning to notice that a second girl was coming on to me. This girl was, bluntly put, attractive, and definitely the chill sort. The only problem was that my bunk-mate was semi-involved with this lady.

I for one think that monogamous camp relationships are overrated, but this was different. She was with my bunk-mate, my friend, and I could only imagine the awkward nightly conversations about making out with the same girl. Mind over matter, I thought.

It was about this same time I discovered, that this lady friend of ours had an allergy to strawberry’s. From then on I was shoveling down the fruit I hate the most, while he was avoiding this particular fruit like the black plague, for fear of accidentally transmitting them. Apparently her allergy was so severe that her face would puff out and turn beat red when she came into contact with it. It was simple, she touches a strawberry her face turns into one.

For the last weeks of camp I used this method to narrowly avoid encounters with the girl I liked for the sake of my friend sleeping next to me. Strawberry’s morning, noon, and night; I would’ve rather eaten tar. Still it became more awkward as camp went on, culminating with her announcing to no one in particular that she would pick me over my friend. He was right behind us.

A few weeks after camp ended the girl ended up disclosing to me on face-book that she never really liked my bunk-mate, and that we were closer anyways. I hate strawberries, but that was the day I decided I like strawberries better than girls.