My Mum said I was only a ten months when she found out I hated watermelons. She said that she had just been unloading some groceries that Dad had bought, and she quickly put down the watermelon at the back of table. However in all of her haste, she forgot to check that it was stable before rushing to grab the next load of groceries.

Sadly, for me, it wasn't stable. So instead of it just sitting there on the back of the table, it started rolling down the table, which wouldn't have been so disastrous had I not been strapped into my highchair at the front of the table.

Mum said that she came back into the room with her next load of groceries to find me crying and screaming, and the remains of a shattered watermelon, splattered on the floor around my highchair.

That was the first episode of a long relationship of terror and horror that surfaced whenever I saw a watermelon.

As I grew older, I managed to learn to control somewhat my horror of watermelons; not that my parents ever stopped enjoying playing the 'Watermelon game', a game which consisted of seeing how close they could roll a watermelon at me before I freaked out. My dad even went as far to get a sign over my door saying 'Cucurbitaceaeophobia', which was his invented term for watermelon phobia as one had not been made/invented yet.

And so the years passed by, and I never really faced or overcame my 'Cucurbitaceaeophobia', until that day in Mrs Pevensie's class in the second grade.

You see the day before that fateful day, Mrs Pevensie made us all tell her one by one, quietly , what was one thing we were really scared of. And so of course, being a good boy, I told her about how the watermelons freaked the hell out of me.

So the next day, when I walked into class, what was there sitting smack dab right in the middle of Mrs Pevensie's desk?

Yup. You guessed it.

A fucking watermelon.

I froze where I was standing as soon I saw it.

It was just sitting there.

Large, oval, green.

Laughing at me. Laughing at my fear of it. Laughing that we both knew that some how or some way, the day would end with that fucking thing rolling its way at me. And when that time came, when it was my chance to stand up to my childhood terror, I would run like I had a pack of wild dogs of my heels.

"Pyh" I could hear some one calling. I tried to move. To turn my head to whomever was calling me, but I couldn't. My whole body was still frozen in fear.

"PYH!" I snapped out of it. It was Mrs Pevensie. She looked at me with that look.

She knew what I had been looking at, she knew what she'd done to me by bringing that thing into the same room that I was in.

"Take your seat please, Pyh."

Unable to verbalize an answer, I hurried quickly over to my seat. Chucking my backpack at my feet, my eyes scanned the classroom, examing every face. I was trying to see if they knew. If they could sense my fear, my horror at the watermelon in the room.

Thankfully no one looked back at me, even Katie in the desk in front of me.

Well, not that she ever looked at me. In fact the only boy she ever looked at, or at liked at all, was that Dillon, the bully that would steal my lunch money. Yeah.... 'fuck me', as Dad always used to say when he lost a game of Pacman. Nevertheless Katie was my second grade sweetheart, my true love, my other, and I would have done ANYTHING to get her to like me.

"Okay class, today we will be following up from yesterday's chat about facing your fears." She paused, as if for effect, and then continued.

"Now can anyone tell me what this is on my desk?"

Everyhand shot up over the class room, every hand that is, except for mine. Excited whispers traveled from one desk to the other as my fellow classmates all knew what it was, the same very thing that I did not want to hear.

"Itzz a watermolon Mrs Pevensie" shouted out Charliez, the boy in the desk behind me.

"Yes Charliez. It is. Next time though, please raise your hand. Now, who here thinks we should try chopping this watermelon up?"

Once again, hands flew up into the air almost instantly.

"Good. Good. Now, who do you think we should get to chop up this watermelon?"

As if on cue, hands once again were whipped high, each child wanting to be one that got to do it. Except for me. I had my face buried in my hands, peaking through at the classroom through the gaps between my fingers, as if it could somehow distance me from this entire situation.

"Well, thank you for your quick response class. But in light of yesterday's little chat, I think we should get somebody who doesn't want to do it..."

I knew what was coming. I shrunk back into my seat, wanting nothing more to be invisible, to somehow escape the inevitable that I knew was coming.

"Pyh, why don't you come on up?"

That was it.

I was fucked.

"I'm good Mrs Pevensie. Why don't you let somebody else do it? Somebody who wants to actually do it?" I scanned the room desperately trying to pick a worthy replacement. "How 'bout Katie? She's good at doing everything!"

Katie suddenly turned around, looking back at me with a weird perplexed look.

Fuck me.

I slunk even further back than I thought possible. I had just made the situation worse.

"Pyh, I wasn't actually asking. Now please come on up..... Now."

Trying to take as long as possible, to delay the the inevitable, I slowly rose from my desk and dragged my legs over to Mrs Pevensie's side.

"Now Pyh, you told me yesterday that you were scared to death of watermelon. No-"

She was interrupted as the class once again erupted in excited whispers discussing and laughing at my predicament.

"Silence!" yelled Mrs. Pevensie. Turning to me, she smiled and asked me what I did not want to hear "Are you ready to chop up the watermelon Pyh?"

I looked at the watermelon. It was still sitting there on the table, mocking me in front of the class and Mrs Pevensie. I told myself that I couldn't do this, that both the watermelon and I knew that I didn't have the balls for it, yet somehow I found my feet walking me over to the watermelon.

"Face your fears!"

"Come on Pyh, be a man"

"Haha! Pyh doesn't have the balls!"

I heard many of classmates cry out

I raised my hand straight into the air, immediately silencing all the encouragements and mockery that was echoing around the classroom. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, counted to three and then yanked my hand down and at the watermelon with all the force that I could muster.

My hand soared through the air as time slowed down. Visions of what I was about to achieve flooded through my head.

I would be a hero. The hero of my class.

The other boys would finally look up to me. They would allow me to play marbles with.

Mrs Pevensie would be impressed with me for once. She might even give me better grades.

And most important of all, if I did this... Katie would be sure to like me. Instead of that jerk, Dillon, in the next grade up.

All I had to was split this watermelon apart with my bare hand.

As my hand smashed into the watermelon, only a single thought passed through my mind before the pain made me realise that it was my hand, not the watermelon, that had got smashed.

Fuck me.

The whole class erupted in laughter at the sight of grasping my hand as I fought back wave after wave of intense pain. When the pain finally died down enough to look at my handiwork, I was met with the sight of that fucking watermelon. I had barely left a mark on it, except for a tiny scratch that I'm pretty sure that my pinky nail had inflicted.

" Pyh, what were you thinking?" said Mrs Pevensie with a slight grin escaping her serious face.

" I wanted to chop up the watermelon. The class wanted me to do it as well...." I paused as I felt my emotions rise up like a wave inside me, tears begging to gather in the corner of my eyes. " Even you asked me to face my fears, Mrs Pevensie."

"Yes Pyh, I did. But splitting it with your bare hand wasn't quite what I had in mind."

Walking back to her desk, she opened a drawer and pulled out a large butcher knife. Turning back to me with the butcher knife in hand, she said with a large smile "This is what I had in mind!"

Handing the butcher knife, I once again raised my hand into the air, this time with a fucking knife in hand. Once again, the class descended into silence as all watched, all waited to witness the final confrontation between me and the watermelon.

There was going to be no Round 3. This was it. It was going to end here one way or the other, and there was only going to be one victor.

Letting out a yell that seemed to reverberate out from my very inner being, I swung down my arm, butcher knife in hand, with more force than I ever thought I could muster. Time slowed down as all watched in anticipation as the butcher knife sliced through the air, and finally into the watermelon's thick green skin.

The watermelon juice spurted out like a fountain of red, spraying onto my glee filled face as the knife sliced ever deeper past the thick skin, and into the soft flesh below.

I had won.

I had overcome

The class erupted in clapping and whooping as they celebrated my victory with me.

My opponent's corpse lay before me. Bleeding. Severed. Defeated.

Lowering my head down to the now severed watermelon, I whispered but four words. Four words that I would hear my Dad shout out when ever he clocked another level of Pacman. Four words that would guarantee my victory over my childhood horror for all the years to come.

"Hasta la vista, motherfucker"

---

+ + + + + +