Nuts To You

The hubby-man forgot his inhaler this morning, so I groggily delivered it to him at about 10 o'clock. In return (like him being able to breathe isn't enough of a gift) he gave me a can of mixed nuts. I had a few more runs to make before I went home, so I opened the can and started nibbling. Now, maybe my mom used to buy cheap "mixed nuts" or something, because I was expecting 50 peanuts and a cashew or two... But these were real mixed nuts! There were pecans and hazel nuts and cashews and my favorite, brazil nuts!

Which leads me to this entry. I first encountered brazil nuts at my grandma's house. We had lost our home and moved in with her and one day we were cracking nuts at the dining table. I had been playing a game, asking my mom what each kind of nut was, then opening it and setting the nut aside to be sampled once I had one of each. I pulled a large brown nut out of the pile, it was bigger than my thumb. I thought there must be something really good inside. I asked mom what it was, and she said, "That's a niggertoe."
A what? I thought she was kidding, so I asked, "What is it really?"
She insisted that it was a niggertoe, so named because it was shaped (kind of) like a toe, and it was brown. She got another brazil nut out of the pile and said, "Look. It's brown on the outside..." As she cracked the nut open, "And it's white on the inside. It's a niggertoe."

And thus began my education on diversity. My 7 year old brain took it to mean that all people are white underneath.
Look, I'm not proud of this or anything; it's just what happened.
I said, "This isn't really somebody's dried toe, is it?" And Mom said, "It is! And it's good! Eat one!"
Thankfully, one of my uncles came into the room at that point and said, "Your mom is kidding you. That's a brazil nut. It grows on a tree."

So I doubtfully ate it. And you know what? It was good.