Seed Spittin'

 

What could seed spitting have to do with writing? When you look at society today, do you wonder if any of the people under thirty years of age have ever spit watermelon seeds? What about you? Are there mores preventing you from even trying?

I grew heritage Baby Bell watermelons this year. Only five were allowed to grow so they could have the best chance at development. When I harvested the first, I didn’t know what to expect. Did I wait long enough for it to mature? No, but I was curious and impatient.

Turns out, the second watermelon was perfect. Because it’s a heritage variety, there’s a generational blessing attached to it. Modern hybrids won’t produce the same variety year after year and the quality suffers. Buy the seeds every spring, plant, tend, cultivate, prune, and pick the fruit. Next year, do it again. Heritage plants produce seeds which can reproduce the same variety, so I save those seeds for next year’s planting. And four generations of plants later, I still get the same luscious fruit.

This morning I harvested the next to last melon. After slicing the end of it off, I cut a wide cross-section to enjoy post-lawn mowing. Wow. What a lot of seeds. Almost impossible to remove them from the fruit. When I grew up in the ‘60s, watermelon spitting was a cherished art. Contests proved one’s worth. But the skill developed through years of spitting enough seeds out of the way gave way to enjoying the meat of the melon.

Nowadays, with seedless melons, kids loose another opportunity to learn patience to get to the good stuff. No spitting for them. Slice it, dice it, and shove it down their throats. And they’ve applied the same actions to most of their lives. College? All done. Now where’s my CEO salary. Discipline disappears.

 When one needs to spit seeds, there are certain natural laws to follow. Don’t chomp a piece bigger than you can chew and separate the seeds inside your mouth. Watermelon is full of, well, water. Have a napkin to wipe your face and for heaven’s sake, don’t slop it all over your good clothes. And when you’re done, discard the rind out of the path of travel, like in a garbage can, the pig sty, or over the fence. It’s the nuances of seed spitting where one learns common sense, and patience.  Patience is how we handle stumbling blocks. It’s a learned skill. Watermelon eating is a basic exercise to learn. Many of today’s young generations lost the opportunity.

Editing our work is a lot like it. We write volumes in order to garner the good stuff, but we must be willing to do the good work of separating and spitting out the seeds. A writing mentor once told me a scene was too long, although well-written. We decided to chop half of it. Her comment to me? “Don’t trash these good words. Save them for another time.” Those things that don’t fit in this work, will be seeds for future work. Processing, saving, storing, and replanting those seeds gives us a future in writing.

Don’t delay, spit out those word seeds and create a legacy for our next generation of readers.