I have to say I love metaphors in writing. They can be simple or they can stretch the boundaries of logic, I don’t care. But some just really hit home.

What does this have to do with strawberries, you ask? I was washing and cutting up strawberries yesterday and stopped to sample one. It was the perfect strawberry; it tasted like childhood. That may seem a strange metaphor to you, but to me it’s barely even metaphor.

When I was little, my next door neighbor had a small strawberry patch. On the other side of his house lived one of my friends. We would play often, passing back and forth through the neighbor’s yard. When the strawberries were ripe, we would pick and eat them. Now I’m a bit ashamed of that, but at the time I didn’t realize I was stealing his berries. It was done in innocence.

Those strawberries had a certain taste to them that I can still remember. The perfect strawberry tastes just like those freshly picked berries from long ago. I can’t experience that taste without also experiencing a flashback to that backyard, that small little strawberry patch, and carefree times playing with friends. It really is the taste of childhood!