Apples to Apples

I was at Hebrew school the first time I used that deck of cards, laying them out on the

cool tile floors of the synagogue. It was one of those rare days where they let us play games

instead of learning to read Torah parshah. The red-and-white cards were so different from any

other deck I’d known, the edges sharp rather than rounded, with words instead of pictures

inscribed on the backs.

The game consisted of a judge who would pull a green-colored card from their own deck

with a list of words on it. The players had to find the best (or often funniest) card that matched

the description the judge had laid down. It was a game of comparison that I grew to love quickly.

I had so much fun that we played for the whole three hours I was in the synagogue, and I

was still laying down cards when my parents arrived to pick me up. I had a stack of green cards

at my side that piled up far higher than the red - trophies of my victory.

After weeks of begging I convinced my parents to buy the game off of Amazon - the

Disney edition of Apples to Apples, featuring characters from Disney movies and TV Shows,

and it was my favorite thing to play after school. I liked winning, I liked laughing, the

comparisons the cards made between characters was exciting to me. The Green Apple cards

contained words like “Sweet” and “Evil” and “Large”, adjectives I attempted to apply to Minnie

Mouse and Cruella DeVile and Lightning McQueen. Even after my little sister had outgrown the

game, after the aunts and uncles and cousins became disinterested in playing with Disney

Princess cards, my parents continued to play with me.

My Dad and I have a relationship that reminds me of a green apple - sour at the first bite,

becoming sweeter on the tongue as you continue to bite into the flesh. We have so many

similarities that he wishes were differences. I think that when he looks at me, he tries to pretend

we’re comparing apples to oranges. He looks at his daughter in his fantasies and sees a partying

socialite who sneaks out to see her friends and has had a million relationships and enjoys the

taste of alcohol despite not being old enough to drink - I’d sum up his vision as a Netflix

rom-com house party. When he dares to compare apples to apples, he looks at his daughter in

reality and sees too much of himself.

Dad has admitted to me multiple times that he wants me to grow into the teenager he

wasn’t, he wants and wants and wants me to be someone I’m decidedly not - not for my sake, but

for himself. His wants and wishes could grow an orchard and in his mind he’s pressuring me to

be his definition of “normal” in the name of sweet love, while in reality every wish he grows

tastes sour on my tongue, like salt rather than citrus, this person he imagines me as isn’t real.

I’m like my Dad in so many ways, to name a few: we are both introverts and we have

small social circles and were bullied in middle school and both of us experienced acne problems

and liked video games and were socially awkward and a little too dorky to be popular. Apples to

Apples.

Sometimes, to challenge myself, I flip the definitions of the words on the Green Apple

Cards, turn “Polite” into “Rude”, “Selfless” into “Selfish”, I challenge myself to find a card in

my deck that’s the exact opposite of what’s on the table, to think of things in a different

perspective: from the roots to the underbellies of sugary flower petals instead of seeing only the

bloom and never the celery stem or dirt below.

I wonder how long it will take my dad to realise his apples have gone sour with age.

When he speak to me, every “Suggestion” turns into a “Demand”, and suddenly I don’t feel like I

control my actions anymore, I don’t control who I talk to and when, I shrivel when he asks what

my friends are doing for Valentines Day, I refuse to draw another card, to keep talking in circles

because he’s controlling his definition of an apple and he won’t listen to me or let me win. His

“apple” is no longer the round, red fruit that gushes sweet juice and pebble-sized seeds. No, his

“apple” is a girl who doesn’t exist, a second chance at life he’ll never get. His “apple” is a

vicarious lifestyle that never came to pass. His “apple” is the swirling chaos of “what-ifs” and

“why-nots” and the temptation of changing his reality, changing his life, changing his daughter.

“I can get you a stylist to fix how you dress.” He wants me to wear Lulu Lemon and dull,

colorless shirts.

“Why don’t you see Isabel today?” He tries to influence my schedule.

“I’m just trying to make you better.” His version of the perfect human being is something

I hope I never become.

Just the thought of his “Suggestions” brings a sour taste to my mouth - on this card is a

small list of synonyms, for clarification: “Suggestions: recommendation, tip, proposal,” But the

way he phrases it is more like a command. I have tried to eat from his orchard, I have tried to

become the daughter he wants, I have tried to be perfect, and in being perfect my stomach

torqued and my back arched and my body expelled the virus in a single scream, my tongue still

coated in poisonous “suggestion.”

What he wants isn’t wrong, but it will never come true. He doesn’t want me to live the

way he did, and in some cases I never will. I will not run the auto-shop, I will not be a

businesswoman, I will not study geriatric health in college. But the things he wants me to do

don’t align with my wants, either. I will not end up a party girl, I don’t want to deal with a

hundred friends, and I am perfectly content with loving books and video games and movies and

shows, much to his dismay.

Once again I am trying to flip the definitions of the cards, giving them the opposite of

what they demanded. “Sweet” became “Sour”, and “Quiet” became “Loud”, and “Obedient”

became “Rebellious.”

This game has been going on for years now, our green cards are stacked high like towers

of poison, the red cards small pills of truth. Neither of us have chosen to give in, so we keep

playing. Sometimes he wins, and sometimes I win, and sometimes we reach a stalemate.

At the end of the game, it’s all a comparison.

Father to daughter,

Reality to fiction,

Truth to perspective,

Apples to Apples.