Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

In an effort to introduce more fruit into my diet (I say “more” just in case the occasional bowl of Fruity Pebbles does in fact count as a “fruit”), I’ve started eating an apple every morning on my way to work.

Now, it may not sound like the safest idea to eat and drive, but I assure you that with the colder weather, most days I end up eating it in my car as I wait for the windows to defrost.

Now, you may be asking “Why would you sit in the car while your windows defrost instead of going back in the house to eat your apple?” Well, to that I simply say there’s not nearly enough column space to properly dive into each of my quirks and peculiarities.

But I digress…

Apples have always been one of my favorite fruits and the perfect choice for in the car eating.

It’s not as sticky or as messy as an orange and not nearly as difficult to eat as a banana. I always make sure to cut up my apples before I leave the house so as to avoid having to inevitably launch an apple core out of my driver’s side window while driving down the highway.

Honeycrisp has always been my favorite variety of apples. Granny Smiths are a little too tart for my tastes, and I’ve always found the skin of a Macintosh too be a little to thick, so much so that I’ve cut my lip in the process of eating one on more than one occasion.

The Honeycrisp is the perfect midway point between a great, sweet flavor (hence the “Honey”) and the perfect crunch as you bite into it (hence the “crisp”).

In addition to the benefits of an enjoyable eating experience, apples also have a lot of health benefits as well.

They’re good for heart health, a great source of hydration and their high fiber content can potentially, in an attempt at discretion and an effort to not be distasteful, let’s say “expedite the paperwork.” I’ll neither confirm nor deny my findings on that subject.

Like the old saying goes “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” and I can with 100% certainty say that I haven’t been to a doctor since I started eating my daily apple, though that may be due more to a deep laden genetic stubbornness that keeps me from taking the time to do things like going to doctors or buying new shoes when the old ones get holes in them.

Regardless, apples have many benefits to your daily life, and I would gladly recommend them to anyone that cares to take my advice on what they should be doing with their life.

In fact, I’ve even discovered a new benefit that I wasn’t aware of before.

I was in my car driving down Highway 53 on my way to Manchester from Woodbury. It was one of those mornings that was cold and cloudy and just sort of cruddy. I don’t know what it is about those mornings that make you think a little too much about life and all of its complexities.

As the various thoughts swirled around in my head and the lines passed by on the long and abnormally straight stretch of road, I started to feel progressively down about the world. My tongue began pushing against my teeth in anxious response to the morning.

Just as it did, I noticed a piece of the day’s Honeycrisp lodged between two of my molars.

“That’s just what I needed today,” I thought.

I immediately began my attempt at dislodging the apple remnant from my teeth with my tongue, poking on it at every angle I could with as much force as I could muster, no toothpick or similarly shaped object in sight.

As I drove my concentration grew deeper towards removing this uncomfortable chunk of fruit or at least as much concentration as I could spare from the ever more important task of driving.

I worked and worked and worked, and then finally sweet relief came as I found the perfect combination of movement, force and leverage to accomplish the harrowing task.

An exhale of relief left my lungs as I shifted 100% of my focus back to driving and realized that I was near the end of my destination. It then occurred to me that none of the things I had been thinking about were thought about the entire time I was trying to get the apple out of my teeth.

Sometimes we just need something to occupy our minds. A good diversion from filling our brains with the nonsense it tends to fill itself with on occasion.

An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but it can also offer a nice distraction from the mental shenanigans your brain tries to get itself involved in on those less than stellar days.