I recently came across someone sharing a way for peeling a mango and my world was turned upside down. As much as I love mango, my detest for peeling and slicing them was so much of a deterrent for me that I ate them much less than I would like. Mango is Julian’s favorite fruit and I found myself trying to talk him into something easy like an apple he could grab himself. Maybe I’m not the only one or maybe I’m just lazy. I had a special mango slicer that went around the oblong pit, then I’d have to slice the grid and invert it but I never managed to slice deep enough to get all the mango off or alternately I’d slice too deep right through the peel and it would never flip into that nice looking hedgehog style mango. It just felt like a lot of effort for subpar results. But when I saw how easy a mango could be peeled with just a swipe down the side of a glass, I was intrigued. I thought for sure it would be harder than it looked, turns out it wasn’t. 

I’ve been doing this for several weeks when it dawned on me that there may be others out there like me and still not in the know of this life changing hack. I decided to share this quick video to Instagram and I was surprised at how many people didn’t know about it. What surprised me even more was that out of everything I’ve posted about animal rights and other controversial things, it was this silly little video that brought me the most hate. I didn’t see that coming. I don’t have a large following on Instagram so I expected maybe 50 people to see the video, not the 12,500+ views it actually received. Most of the comments were of the positive nature but then the comments about it being wasteful started rolling in. And in true internet fashion, they were full of snark and judgement, not constructive by any means.

At first I was trying to respond and explain, then I was getting snarky right back, and finally I just deleted them, edited my caption and moved on.  But I definitely spent too much time trying to decide if I should take it down because the comments were annoying me so badly. I felt weird about deleting them, feeling like I wasn’t being transparent, but that is my personal space and there’s enough negative noise on the internet, I don’t need it there and I feel no qualms about removing those. While I can see why some folks would think it was wasteful, I thought it would go without saying that if any mango was left on the peel, you are under no obligation to throw it away. You can easily run it over the glass again to get any remaining or gnaw it off like a little hamster. Don’t throw it away! But honestly, you’ll probably not have any excess left – the only reason I did, I was busy watching my camera view finder because the auto-focus likes to blur on me when I move in videos. I’ve done too many attempts at filming myself cooking only to find that there was a 5 minute chunk of straight up blur. I had one mango left so that meant one shot. I was unhappy with how it peeled for me that time but trying to get away from my need for impossible perfection, I thought it was good enough for a quick IG post. The internet told me that was a mistake, apparently.

It’s really sad to me that even though it took me maybe 20 minutes to film and trim it down to post, it was still something I took the time to do for no reason other than to share with others and I acknowledged in the comment thread that this wasn’t a good attempt but strangers couldn’t even take 10 seconds to read the caption or think constructively on how they could improve such a thing before leaving some snarky comment. I’ve recently been on the fence with social media recently and this almost sealed the deal. It wasn’t that it hurt my feelings on a personal level, it was more that it made me sad for humanity. Is this really where we are at in life? So quick to think we know the whole story and drop rude bombs on something so benign as a mango video but the majority of people keep quiet on horrific injustices? How do people just not scroll on by? Less internet and more life is the answer I keep coming back to for all of us. I first started blogging and putting myself out into the anonymous world of the internet in 2004, then as a mommy blogger, and I’m no stranger to all the unpleasantness that comes with being vulnerable online but something about this really got to me because of the absolute pettiness of it. Maybe it’s just the place I’m currently in about social media – which is an entirely different post to come but it really made me grateful for those who do follow me and take the time to like my posts, leave comments, have constructive dialog, or scroll by when they disagree. 

With that out of the way, I hope you find this helpful or at the very least, interesting! Let me know if you give it a try. Someone else commented that it looked potentially dangerous as the glass can break. While it’s not as much pressure as it looks, I do not try it with more delicate glasses. You can try with a plastic cup to be extra safe, I’ve not yet tried, or something sturdier like a mason jar. Just give it a try and go with what you are comfortable. Let me know if you do this and what you think!