Random flashback

I often bring my lunch to work, and since New Years I have nearly every day. During the winter, I usually try to bring something for a hot lunch - homemade soup or stew, or leftover meat/veggies from the night before. Today I brough a salad made simply of romaine lettuce, thinly sliced carrot rounds, cherry tomatoes, and salmon baked with a chili rub.

I struggled to spear the first cherry tomato with my fork; it kept slipping into the bed of lettuce. Finally, it was punctured and once in my mouth, my bite made it explode with a fairly tart, but not unpleasant, acidity. I instantly had a vivid flashback, but not to a certain time or place, but to a former me. I felt like I was instantly me about 5 or 9 years ago biting into that tomato, maybe at lunch when I worked as a temp at the University House at UCSC in the year after I graduated or maybe when I worked for my aunt during the summer in an office near South Coast Plaza between high school and university. But it was definitely a "me" pre-consultung, pre-San Francisco and pre-London.

How weird that something like the taste and texture of a not quite ripe tomato can launch me in time and space to a former existence. I also think it has something to do with me trying to figure out who I am these days, and not so unusually, mentally playing with my different past identities. It was simply brought to my conscious by a tiny little tomato (and yes, when I write that, I now mentally say 'to-MAH-to').