Here in Northern Illinois long about October it's become very fashionable for couples and families to go pick apples. People seem to show the same exhuberance every summer over corn boils. I see women surrounding the bin of corn at Walmart like crows as if they've never seen corn before.
Which is sort of funny because...
In Northern Illinois we're literally fucking surrounded by corn and apples.
I'd say what has happened here is an absolute disconnect between people and the environment. A disconnect so profound they consider the fruits and vegetables growing around them to be foreign delicacies. Spooky, really.
I think people really have lost track of anything that exists outside of the Walmart that seems to create the border between "civilization" and whatever exists "out there."
Corn?
Apples?
Heard of them?
I know, I'm an asshole, and probably the only person in the world who sees harmless, romantic, family activities like obsessing over apples as a symptom of a larger sickness in society, but that's how I feel.
Is it possible one day Walmart will sell virtual apple picking tours to young lovers and families who are too oblivious to their surroundings to know these objects once actually grew somewhere "out there?"