"W" as in Whiskey

When I was about 11, my father was listening to NPR in the car and I was the captive audience in the back seat with no choice but to listen. It was some gardening and/or food themed show and the host was talking about how carrots grown in the winter produce more sugar. This is an evolutionary tactic on the carrot’s part to survive harsh conditions. And that was when this man dropped the most banger line I’ve ever heard. “When you bite into a carrot and it tastes sweet, that’s the carrot saying ‘I don’t want to die.’” I was floored, changed as a person forever. This line haunts me. The poetry. The emotion. NPR made me the sappy garden idiot I am today, romanticizing senescence and over analyzing the science behind vegetables.