Flying home from Georgia the other day, I upgraded to first class for the DFW – Burbank segment. The nice thing about first class — aside from the bigger seats, more legroom, and the whole “commoners to the back of the plane, please” thing — is that they serve dinner up there. While eating this dinner, I had what was probably one of the stupidest moments of my life.

I’m eating a salad — mixed greens with pesto-ranch dressing — and feeling pretty good about myself: “Look at me, Mr. Healthy, eating a salad. Go me!” I eat a cherry tomato, I crunch on a crouton, I spear a leaf of lettuce, I eat a grape– Ack! Full stop!

That grape tasted terrible!

I was expecting a nice sweet juicy little grape, and instead I bit into this bitter, sour, really not-sweet thing. It was pretty gross, actually. But I’m a trouper, I ate it anyway.

And then I reflected on it as I continued eating the salad. What the hell happened to that grape? Was it rotten? Nah, it didn’t taste rotten … at least not quite. But what was wrong with it? Huh, dunno, it was just weird.

A little further into the salad I came across another one of these grapes. I checked it out and it looked okay, so I bite into it. Again, sour, bitter, not-sweet at all. But this time I was expecting it, so it didn’t surprise me. This time I didn’t think it was so bad. Kind of good, actually.

So I started reflecting on what they might have done to a grape to make it taste this way. It was a familiar kind of flavor but I couldn’t quite place it. It was similar to a pickle, but more intense. So I tried to imagine how you would pickle a grape, and why you’d want to, and why an airline would then serve such nouvelle cuisine. I couldn’t figure it out. So I kept eating the salad.

I found one more grape as I finished the salad off. I saved it for last. I examined it carefully and didn’t see anything terribly unusual. It was thinner than a grape normally is, and had a weird little cross-hatched cut-out on the bottom and the top was cut off (probably to aid in the pickling process, I figured), but all in all it looked okay.

I bit into it and again got that familiar flavor — pickle-like, but a more intense, fuller flavor. And the texture was different, too, it was meatier than a grape normally is. And that flavor was so familiar… I could almost place it… It tasted like… like… like…

And then it hit me: It tasted just like an olive!

And then I started pondering why a cook might want to make a grape taste like an olive? What’s the point to that, what’s the goal? Why not just use an oli—

And then I realized that I am, in fact, a moron. The grape was an olive!

What a maroon.