The first time I had a pecan was when my friend Sarah from across the street gave me one. See, despite the fact our street was covered in pecan trees, I had been told not to eat them. My mother was afraid of stray plants. She thought since they weren’t domesticated they’d poison their fruit as a defense. Because of this I was terrified to eat them. My friend Sarah however, her family were a lot poorer than mine and so almost all of what she ate were pecans harvested from the trees that littered our town. Since she didn’t eat very often, she guarded her food like a bull elephant guards it’s calf and so I viewed the pecans she picked in the same way she did; as treasures. So when we were pitted against each other in the regional glockenspiel finals, I requested that if I won, she’d have to give me a pecan. If she won however, I’d have to give her a kiss. I absolutely demolished her of course, but she was foolish for offering such a prize when she knew I was so much more talented than she was and so I gladly accepted that pecan if for no other reason than to teach her a lesson. I was still wary of the poisons my mother warned me about, but ate it anyway and ate it proud and my, what a marvelous taste it let out as it exploded in my mouth. Salty, yet decadent. It tasted so much better than I imagine her lips would have and so I was glad to have absolutely demolished her and won first place in the glockenspiel finals. This was before the fire, of course. The dead can’t play the Glock. After Sarah and 18 of my other classmates perished that September, I thought not of them but of pecans and how I might never be able to eat one again without thinking of Sarah. What a loss that would be. So I ate pecans anyway. Through the pleas from my mother not to poison myself and from my own tears at that September fire, I devoured those beautifully crispy nuts like a squirrel version of Tom Hanks in Castaway would have if he’d come across them. Eventually, I began to associate them with my mothers tears instead of Sarah’s smile. A much more pleasant image. Even now when I eat pecans, I think of my mother and I laugh and laugh. But sometimes, I think of fires too. Never of Sarah though. She was too inadequate of a glockenspiel player to deserve being remembered.