Lessons From the Kissing Booth

So I guess it's the season for blackberries.
I didn't know until I got here that blackberries grow in curls and tangles and snarls on the sides of the roads and things, just waiting to be eaten. Last summer someone (I think it was Dylan) posted a picture of something to do with blackberries, and I made the dramatic mistake of admitting that I had never had one. Well, didn't that just open up a can of worms. So later, in September, we were walking along the train tracks in Ballard when Kathleen spied a blackberry bush and picked one for me. It was sour and I hated it.
After that I mostly forgot about blackberries. They were over and so even though I went a few places where they should be, all the berries were dead, and since they were so sour I wasn't interested.
But then last night Jeff and I were walking down my street on our way to get pizza, and I stopped dead in my tracks. Some stuff on the side of the road looked suspiciously like blackberries to me. That's because they were, and I hesitated over them. I wanted to try them, because here they were, but I hadn't like last year's. But Jeff explained that the soft ones are the ripest ones, and so I picked the softest one I could find, closed my eyes, and ate it. It was sweet and I liked it.
Today I was walking home and I passed the same snarl of blackberry leaves. I was fuzzy from hunger. I spent half the day at the DOL doing drivers license related things and just wanted to eat the sandwich I had in my hand. But I stopped at the bush anyway, and crouched over it, looking for a good berry. I was trying to hide that I was eating blackberries off the side of the road all by myself, but someone on the road honked and I jerked my hand straight into what I think you call a bramble. And that sucker hurt.
So, fuck that. I guess I'll be eating my road berries out in the open, and proudly. All this food's just lying there, waiting to be eaten, after all, and ignoring it would be sort of wasteful. I found the softest berry I could and pulled it off, bruising it a little, the juice staining my fingertips purple. It was sweet, and I liked it.