(Mark Two- or Mk 2- defensive hand grenade. You may wonder how this is a defensive thing, but I believe everything I read on Wikipedia. Photo Wikipedia.)

Back to work it was yesterday, and back into a new old world that puts the things of summer behind.

Some of those are good things to put away- wheelchair and crutches among the unlamented artifacts- and the trudge to the HQ building of my government customer was the longest hike since the accident in March. It was exciting to be able to do it, and if along the way someone rolled a pineapple out of the pavement, I do not think I would have been able to jump on it.

A couple generations of American Dog-faces used to call hand grenades “Pineapples,” due to the serrated exterior of the standard Mk 2 defensive hand grenade. The grooves facilitate the fragmentation of the device for maximum lethality, and assist the hurler in gripping the mini-bomb. Developed to replace the Mk 1 used in the Great War, the devices were most heavily used during World War Two, though the grenade was still in issue through the conflict in Indochina. It was phased out gradually, with the Navy and Marines being the last users, as usual.

If there is one thing that should alarm you more than the idea of Sailors with Guns, it should be a Sailor with a rifle and a couple Mk 2s on their bandoleers.

Anyway, I was untroubled at the time by the notion that a grenade was going off in my little Sailor’s kitchen.

Trudging up to the building, I was happy that the rains of morning had passed and if the leg ached, at least I was dry and comfy when I got to the meeting. I did not know that a pineapple had gone off at Big Pink, and my kitchen was the target.

I did not know it at the time, though I should have had an inkling of the slow-motion explosion.

My white budget microwave sits on the corner of the long faux marble counter with which an owner two generations removed had updated the kitchen. I noticed a dark stain on the edge of the appliance, and a small pol of dark viscous substance had spread on the counter surface.

I dutifully mopped it up, wondering what had caused me to spill something in such a relatively remote area of the working surface.

The next day a similar stain appeared. This time a minor clue struck me. Perhaps something was leaking from above?

I opened the cabinet and surveyed the deep-storage larder. On the first shelf was the raw honey from Pond Hill Farms in the Little Village by the bay. The stuff is eternal. I took the jars down and washed them, and then washed some of the dark muck off the shelf.

There were some interesting other things toward the back, part of the post-attack stockpile that I had not seen in a few years, all unopened, but the latest “best by” date on the bottom was in 2008, the year of hope and change: a can of Clapper Girl baking soda can I purchased because I had only seen the brand on ancient roadside signage as a kid, in the back of Raven’s Rambler station wagon headed west across Iowa. Some sliced water chestnuts. A tall bottle of Vietnamese Nuoc Mam fish sauce, apparently in preparation for some time when I was really going to get into wokking the hell out of some regional delicacies.

A good idea from a couple years ago, I imagine, though I could not recall buying it intentionally, and may have been placed there by the Stir-fry Fairy.

Life has a way of going on. It might have been on the eve of the Republican Convention when the grenade went off, and the consequences were still dripping by the start of the Democratic Convention in Charlotte. I was in search of mushrooms to add to a sauce that seemed appropriate to the mood and weather, and that is when I discovered the debris from the can of Safeway-brand Fancy Sliced Pineapples.

OK, OK, I know the pesky things are high acid, and I know that over time chemical reactions can occur in the inky blackness of a hermetically-sealed can. But this explosion was tempered just enough to press the sugary acid juice up against the lids of the pineapple, bowing the top and bottom and sides to look remarkably like a hand grenade.

I have all the cans out of the cabinet now, not exactly the way I intended to start the week. But at least the clean-up will keep my mind off other things. Do you think that food should be rotated? I sighed and started to make another list to replenish the strategic stockpile of Vietnamese and other specialty food items.

It is precisely as I said. There is something about a Sailor and hand grenades. I had no idea that they come in all sizes and flavors.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra. Best By 2008.
www.vicsocotra.com