A childhood belief about dangerous food

i used to believe that gooseberries had teeth and that i had been bitten by one.

i was send to pick them in our garden when i was about 5 and looking back now i realise i must have been pricked by a thorn. i ran to the house to tell my mother what her agressive gooseberries had done to me and she declared that there was no way the gooseberry could have bitten me, because they don't have teeth.

i was sent back to the fruit beds to carry on picking but told to be careful of the thorns. i spent the rest of the afternoon in a fit of angry and and indignant rage, not because my finger had been pricked, but because my mother had so unjustly disbelieved that the gooseberry had bitten me.