I Sent The Mayor to Fruit loop University and Accidentally Invented a City

I closed the door because my husband was prancing around on the outskirts of my office.

Well, technically, he was sweeping the floor and doing laundry, but in Fruitloop language that is still prancing. Domestic ballet with a broom. Laundry choreography. The Mayor heard the noise, of course, because The Mayor hears everything that can be turned into a headline.

And there it was.

Confessions from Fruitloop: my husband does the laundry better than I do.

I did not say better in the beginning. I said different. His process is different. His specifications are different. His laundry universe does not run on the same clock as mine. But I had to admit, sometimes his process is more effective. Same-day service, apparently. The Mayor was deeply impressed. Possibly shaken. Somewhere in Europe, a domestic worldview wobbled.

Of course, there was still a bunch of socks that I had washed and not folded, but that was on me. I accepted responsibility for the sock mountain. A leader must know when the socks are her own.

Then The Mayor started asking about my four-day weekend, and I explained that my son had been begging to watch The Meg. Not Meg 2. We had already watched Meg 2. He liked it. Now he wanted the first one, because apparently shark-infested waters are a family bonding activity.

The Mayor, very bravely, mentioned that he had watched trailers for some of my movie recommendations and that they had taken him out of his comfort zone. This is why I told him very clearly not to follow recommendations from my husband and my son. That would be dangerous. That would be a whole other department. That is the Fruitloop Bureau of Censure, and I stand by its work.

We drifted into Ryan Gosling, The Fall Guy, The Notebook, Barbie, Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant, Notting Hill, and The Mayor trying to remember things through the misty fog of his own cinematic filing cabinet. I told him we watched Barbie because it was Fruit Loopy. Obviously. Pink, strange, unexpected, and better than people thought. That is practically a curriculum category.

And then we arrived at the real business of the day.

The Mayor had told me he was off the planet, under the weather, beside himself, and in no space. So I had full control of Peeling Potatoes 51.

This is not a responsibility one takes lightly.

Two weeks before, I had sent him somewhere uncomfortable. He was still afraid to go back there. Fair enough. I decided today would not be beginner, intermediate, or advanced.

Today was Level Fun.

There are no levels in Level Fun. That is the point.

I sent The Mayor back to Fruitloop University.

I asked him: if a dragon, a toaster, and a watermelon were trapped on a spaceship, who would stay calm?

He immediately tried to make it complicated because he is The Mayor and The Mayor cannot see a dragon, a toaster, and a watermelon without asking for the wider political, emotional, and aeronautical context. Why are they on the spaceship? Were they trained? Is it a sequential process? What is the bigger picture?

In Fruitloop World, it is perfectly normal that a dragon, a toaster, and a watermelon are trapped on a spaceship. No additional documentation needed.

Eventually, The Mayor decided the dragon would get excited and probably destroy the spaceship by huffing and puffing and spitting fire. The toaster would heat up and go pop. The watermelon, being a big heavy lump of peaceful fruit, would remain calm.

Then I had to point out that the watermelon would not sit there. It would float. There is no gravity.

He accepted the correction with dignity, because this is why he is enrolled and I am the faculty.

The watermelon became the calm one. The dragon became dangerous. The toaster became lonely because there was no bread to toast. Already, without meaning to, we had the start of a story.

Then I asked him what vegetable would sell out first if his emotions were vegetables in a supermarket.

He went straight for the potato.

Of course he did.

The potato is the staple. The base vegetable. The thing that goes with everything. Meat, meals, life, Brida, Peeling Potatoes, Potato Moose, Potato Land, all of it. The potato is not glamorous, but it is reliable. It holds the whole strange architecture together.

Then I broke the laws of childhood by informing him that my son does not like potatoes. Not even fries. He eats broccoli. He eats beans. He eats mushrooms. He eats dodgy vegetables. But fries go to waste.

The Mayor found this deeply suspicious.

I cannot explain it. My son orders a burger with no garnish, no tomato, no salad, no pickles, nothing. Then he eats mushrooms. Children are not systems. They are plot twists.

We wandered through the price of potatoes, supermarkets, the Portuguese guy, rand, euros, and the emotional economy of vegetables. Somewhere in that potato aisle, The Mayor announced a new process he wants to introduce: The Spud Toss.

Apparently, I do not have to do anything.

Even more fun.

Then I brought out the worried unicorn.

If a worried unicorn met a confident cabbage, what would they talk about?

I had my unicorn mug with me, so the academic conditions were perfect.

The Mayor decided that the unicorn was worried because nobody believes it exists. This is rude, because unicorns clearly exist. They exist on mugs, in imagination, and in the parts of the world where ordinary logic has not taken over completely.

The confident cabbage became a motivational speaker. A cabbage guru. A green leafy life coach with perfect English.

This happened because my husband had watched a video that morning where a famous South African man said, “for the last couple of five years,” and now that sentence was etched into my brain forever. The last couple of five years. Beautiful. Tragic. Linguistically pineapple.

So the cabbage spoke perfect English, not “last couple of five years” English, and tried to encourage the unicorn. But the unicorn did not understand the cabbage properly. The cabbage became more confident because it was on a roll, and the unicorn stayed worried.

Then The Mayor rescued the unicorn by sending it to me.

The cabbage mentioned Fruitloop, and the unicorn immediately wanted to know how to get to me, because I was apparently its guru, savior, and the only human — or thing, depending on The Mayor’s temporary vocabulary malfunction — who could understand it.

So the unicorn broke through my security system, stood at my front door, and said, “Hi, I’m the worried unicorn. Can you help me, please?”

Of course I would help.

I would open the door, open my arms, and the worried unicorn would become a happy unicorn. Eventually it would live on my coffee mug, where all emotionally restored unicorns belong.

This is how the Unicorn Faculty of Fruitloop University was born.

Then I asked him what animal would follow his happiness around.

The Mayor went back to Australia.

This is one of the things I love about these conversations. I ask a question about happiness, and suddenly he is a child in Australia, eyeballing a kookaburra with a camera. A kookaburra does not sing like a polite bird. It laughs. It sits there looking cheeky, as if the world is ridiculous and it has known this the entire time.

So happiness, for The Mayor, would be followed by a kookaburra.

A laughing bird.

That made sense. His happiness would not be followed by something graceful and silent. It would be followed by a bird that laughs at him from a gum tree.

Then came Fruitloop City.

If a banana became mayor ofFruitloop City, what new rules would it make?

The Mayor immediately said, “Don’t slip on the banana peel.”

This is the sort of law one expects from a banana administration.

The national colour would be yellow. Life would be sweet. Bananas would stand upright and proud. The banana mayor would tell everyone not to shrivel in the corner, not to be prickly, not to hide. Stand your ground. Be proud to be a banana.

This sounded good for Fruitloop City.

We discovered that Fruitloop City already has a university, unicorns, dragons, aliens, robots, watermelons, talking fruit, talking vegetables, and definitely no Elon Musk. The aliens may have arrived there with spaceship technology, which would explain how the dragon, toaster, and watermelon ended up in space in the first place.

They probably climbed into the alien spaceship out of curiosity. The spaceship mistook them for aliens and took off. The dragon panicked, the toaster popped, and the watermelon floated through the crisis like a philosophical fruit.

Now we had a story.

Not just a story. A magical fantastical story.

The Mayor does not want ordinary fantasy. Fantasy makes him think of Harry Potter and such things. He wanted magical fantastical. So we created a genre on the spot, because that is what happens when potatoes are peeled properly.

Then I asked him how he would explain a feeling to an alien.

He said you cannot explain a feeling. You have to demonstrate it.

His first idea was to hit the alien with a stick.

This is where I paused internally and made a note that human-alien diplomacy may not be The Mayor’s strongest department.

He did say he would ask permission first. In the interest of science. The alien, being logical and mathematical and probably built on binary code, would need practical experience. The stick would make contact with the alien’s body, fur, skin, or whatever aliens have, and then the alien would report the sensation.

Then, in the name of balance, the alien would hit The Mayor back.

The Mayor would react. Pain. Red mark. Screaming. Feeling.

That covers one category.

For affection, however, the process becomes more complicated. He might have to hug the alien. Or kiss the alien. This is where I thought about Predator and asked him to imagine kissing an alien that looks like that.

We left that one there.

Some thoughts deserve to be placed carefully on a shelf and not poked again.

We discussed pets and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, because apparently this is where alien affection leads. I said I would do it if I had to, but it would be very, very gross. There would be toothpaste after. And mouthwash. A lot of mouthwash.

Then came the talking cactus.

If your friend was a talking cactus, how would you know when they were happy?

The Mayor first objected to the sadness of a life where one’s only friend is a cactus. I told him at least it was talking. He felt this made it worse.

But then he found the answer.

A happy cactus lowers its guard.

People do this too. Some people wave. Some shake hands. Some hug. Some kiss cheeks. Some families kiss each other on the mouth, which we once discussed with Rosie and Monica, and which remains a whole cultural cactus patch of its own.

The cactus, when happy, would lower its prickles. It would allow closeness without stabbing the human. It would stop defending itself for a moment. That is how you know.

There it was again. Soft profundity, sneaking in through the side door wearing a cactus costume.

Then I asked him what advice a rainbow-coloured potato would give him if it became his life coach.

The answer was beautiful.

The rainbow potato would ask, “What colour would you like me to be today for you?”

If it was red, it would signal emotion and uncertainty. If it was green, confidence. Yellow, radiance. Blue, floating and happy-go-lucky. Violet, something mysterious that neither of us fully pinned down. The potato would either change colour to help you, or remind you to match the colour it was showing.

A potato life coach.

Do what I do, but not what I say.

Finally, I asked him whether his emotions today were sunshine, a rainbow tornado, or chocolate snow.

He said the day had started as a rainbow tornado. His brain had been fuzzy. He could not get things together. But after being led through my questions and the whole Peeling Potatoes feeling, it had become sunshine.

That made me happy.

Then we debated chocolate snow.

I wondered if chocolate snow was good or bad. The Mayor said bad, because snow melts and chocolate melts, and I added that chocolate is sticky. Then I thought of a chocolate waterfall, because obviously I did. I am a chocoholic. This is known. The Mayor said too much of a good thing makes it less valuable, which is probably true, although I still think a chocolate waterfall deserves further research.

By the end, The Mayor had given me dragons, toasters, watermelons, worried unicorns, confident cabbages, alien feelings, cactus friendships, rainbow potatoes, banana politics, and a laughing kookaburra.

I asked him if he had fun.

He had fun.

I had fun too.

And somewhere between the laundry ballet, the shark movie, the socks, the potato prices, the alien kissing problem, and the cactus lowering its prickles, we accidentally built Fruitloop City.

It has a university. It has a banana mayor. It has aliens with questionable spaceship security. It has a watermelon with emotional stability. It has a toaster in need of purpose. It has a dragon with impulse-control issues. It has a worried unicorn looking for my front door. It has a confident cabbage giving motivational speeches in perfect English. It has a kookaburra laughing at the whole thing.

And now, apparently, it has a story waiting to be written.

This is what happens in Peeling Potatoes.

You start with a closed door and laundry in the background.

You end with a magical fantastical city.

And The Mayor, somehow, gets sunshine.