An Onion brings a Tear

About two and a half years ago, the first Tear-free onion has come to birth. The heartbreaking thing is I didn’t find out until five minutes ago when I was surfing the web. This genetically modified tear free onion was an invention of some British scientists and there’s a chance that the British had kept it to their own people and had never been introduced to other countries. Owing to my little knowledge in world politics, Great Britain and the America are allies since WW II. If GB allows export, I should have seen it in a local organic grocery store here in the States.

Why heartbreaking? The story went back a few weeks when my parents paid a short visit in the States. I had dropped the habit of eating breakfast since my years in college as I always slept until the very last minute and rushed out of the house for class, and now, for work. My dad always sent me newspaper about the importance in having breakfast and how studies had shown that kids who ate in the morning were generally smarter and performed better in class. I had no doubt as eating breakfast allowed our bodies to metabolize earlier in the day. Yet, I didn’t think it would do too much to my intelligence because my brain should be well developed since decades ago. During the stay of my dad, he would always wake up early to prepare breakfast for me. Usually he would only microwave something edible, but there was this one day he decided to go complicate and make some corn beef sandwich. Keeping in mind that my dad did not cook at all, this was quite a challenging task. He took an onion from the fridge, started chopping. The stingy smell from the onion got into his eyes and he cried. To him, this was an unexpected biological reaction. Well, the fate of this onion ended up in the trash can, while my dad went pretty crazy.

To me, this onion story is hilarious, yet sweet in my heart.