Pumpkins
but how could I warn them?
I would like - if I may - to tell you about the girl with whom I carpool to school every morning. I am not sure how much to tell, however, as I wish to relate some specific information she has imparted unto me since Halloween. Perhaps, though, I will offer a brief description in order to properly set the stage.
Her name is not K., but that is what I will call her for confidentiality's sake. She is not an altogether bad person; in fact she is quite the upstanding Christian, which makes her a very nice person - sadly though, she is not of the hip, current "WWJD" variety of Christian (at least the ones who don't tread into evangelistic territory), but of the conservative sheltered variety. Not fundamentalist, just boring.
While I'm not one to judge a person by the clothes that they wear I am someone who will judge a person by the clothes that they wear, and K.? well, K. wears brown boat shoes. I didn't even know boat shoes existed anymore. Complemented with alternating jeans and khakis, nondescript shirts, and a braid as thick as your arm that could be tucked in her belt (if she wears one), we have someone who does not devote a lot of her time to fashion.
Which is perfectly all right (although if I may about the hair, I've found in past experience that people who grow their hair markedly long seem to tend to do so with time and attention made abundant due to sheltered-ness, e.g., Mennonites).
She also listens exclusively to classical music, which is also perfectly all right; I had a good friend in high school who listened only to classical and 20th-century music - granted, he was also an elitist nerd who played AD&D (before I did), but he did turn me on to Beavis & Butt-head (it was funny at the time).
Actually, she also listens to Praise 106.5 FM, the Christian worship station from Washington state - I know this because she listens to it every morning on the way to school. I've nothing against worshipping
God; after all, it's part of the Christian faith, and if God exists then hey, He probably deserves some worshipping - but if I were a deity, and my followers decided to worship me with dynamic-less soft rock songs repeating the same words and phrases both within and between themselves ("I'd like to request 'Praise the Lord'" / "All right, by whom?")? Well, I'd be in flood-mode.
I appear to have sidetracked myself. Ah yes.
I'm not trying to bad-mouth her, since she is my ride and what goes around has a way of coming around, but there you have it. I am merely attempting to paint a picture of her character, admittedly from my viewpoint, so that you, dear readers, might understand.
So K. is quite nice, but on the whole rather boring. Myself, I am quiet. Especially at eight o'clock in the morning - plus car rides make me sleepy. So I'm not usually to up to shooting the breeze. K., on the other hand, seems to be one of those kinds of people who have to fill silences. Unfortunately though, she usually has nothing of note to fill it with - this does not deter her.
The upshot, however, is that I am becoming quite adapt at knowing when to say "Yeah" and "Sure," and nod my head at the appropriate times without actually knowing what is being said - if you might meet me you may wonder if I am ever actually listening to you. So anyway, I'm usually not listening with rapt attention.
Sometimes I'll ask her questions, like inconspicuously and tactfully finding out why she doesn't celebrate Halloween. And then, the morning after Halloween, on the way to school, she remarked to me how she had been charged by her mom to be on the look-out for some pumpkins, preferably, she joked, ones that weren't smashed.
And Why? your humble narrator ventured, was she on the look-out for pumpkins? Various reasons, all seeming to me to be absurd or at the least socially questionable, came to me.
"My mom wants them," was the response, "for baking."
All right. I don't know if you're as perplexed as I was (bearing in mind that I was locked in a speeding car with her), but I found this answer to be, well, odd. I would, however, remain tactful and polite. She was still, after all, my no-bloody-way-am-I-getting-up-at-6:00am-to-ride-to-school ride to school.
She continued about her mom's baking and pumpkins. Okay, so her family doesn't celebrate Halloween so natch they won't have leftover Jack-o-lanterns.
"Why not," I asked, "just go buy one?"
"They're expensive!" she said.
Twelve cents a kilogram (or pound, I don't remember)? Sure, pumpkins are heavy, so that price can escalate pretty quickly, but not to the point where one would consider it a financial detriment to purchase even one, right? Gluten-free bread in the Bay's health store, that's expensive, at seven dollars for a loaf the size of a videocassette. But pumpkins?
Well, I wasn't going to press the issue. I would just accept the fact that she decided to make some small talk, and the topic just happened to be the fact that she might be pulling over to the side of road at some point to pluck some retired jack-o-lantern off someone's yard and toss it in the car. I suppose, then, that it was for the better that she forewarned me.
Truth be told, though, that it was taking a pumpkin off of someone's yard that she joked about, that it would appear odd and silly: she had no reservations about taking them out of someone's garbage. Apparently, this has happened in the past. Again, I would leave it be, and not jeopardize my transportation or, possibly, personal security. That, I thought, is the end of that.
The next morning, two days after Halloween (this morning, in fact, at the time of this writing), some small talk resumes:
"How are you?" she asked.
"Pretty good."
"That's good. So my dad found two pumpkins yesterday."
Oh no.
I decided to say nothing. K. was more than willing than to talk of her own volition.
"Yeah, two big ones. He found them at the bottom of the garbage bin - there are thirty-nine townhouses in our complex and all their garbage goes into that bin so they were pretty hard to get at!"
(Now I know what you're thinking: I must be making this up. But I assure you, dear readers, that as this happened to your humble narrator just this very morn the experience is still quite fresh in his mind, etched in like a newly-carved jack-o-lantern: these words herein are near verbatim.)
It occurred to me then to ask her "Why didn't you just ask a neighbour for their pumpkins? If they were just going to throw them out anyway you could have, uh, saved your dad some trouble." The question still burns within me, but I asked it not: how could I? I felt as if in a dream - or watching a show on TLC: just too bizarre to turn off.
She continued: "He stepped in one, then hooked his foot in it, and finally flipped it out," she laughed. "But for the other one he had to bolt a piece of metal to a stick to pull it out. When he brought them in my mom asked him how long it took him to get them out [re: purchase question, neighbour question]! They were big pumpkins, she said they'd last for four years! We still have one from two years ago, frozen, we didn't get one last year."
Do the neighbours know? What do they think? Do they avoid? Condone? Assist? Imagine a full-grown man with elaborate homemade contraptions removing your discarded pumpkin from the bottom of the strata's Dumpster.
When she related the story to A., our other carpooling compatriot, A. asked her what they did with the pumpkins: the answer was "Freeze them." I don't know whether the question was asked in some attempt to deal with the story, or simple curiosity. Perhaps this is common practicefor people whose names are a single letter?
K. continued that her mom would probably make some pumpkin bread: she would make something with the pumpkins anyway, as they were having company that night. To be clear, that wasn't an inference on my part: her mom would be making something with the pumpkins for the company that night. But how could I warn them?
Admittedly, though, not the entire pumpkins would be used, just the inside: the outside, the part that was actually in contact with the surrounding garbage in the garbage bin, would be discarded. Again.
But doesn't it strike you as odd? K. spoke about it with such ease and matter-of-fact-ness that I honestly began questioning my own social beliefs. Is it then I who is misguided? Does polite society remove pumpkins from others' lawns and garbages for their own culinary needs? Or are questions of social acceptability and food safety null in this case, or all cases, and if so, why? Am I just some kind of prude?
I went to the Rich Weirdo's presentation of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Vogue Theatre on Halloween night (the biggest Halloween show in North America this year) and had a blast - but this... this is like some kind of real-life In the Mouth of Madness, only not utterly boring.
Assuming I'm right, and she's weird, how would this practice have come into being, and with whom is it shared? I think my biggest concern is for their company: do they know where their pumpkin pie came from? Does it concern them? Do they not know, and K.'s mother, knowing that garbage-pumpkin, not being a common dish, would not be knowingly well-received, leave them to their ignorance? Or would she, not sharing my social ideals, relate to them the cute story of their pumpkins' salvage, with what would otherwise be hilarious consequences?
What kind of bizzaro world have I stepped into??
Her name is not K., but that is what I will call her for confidentiality's sake. She is not an altogether bad person; in fact she is quite the upstanding Christian, which makes her a very nice person - sadly though, she is not of the hip, current "WWJD" variety of Christian (at least the ones who don't tread into evangelistic territory), but of the conservative sheltered variety. Not fundamentalist, just boring.
While I'm not one to judge a person by the clothes that they wear I am someone who will judge a person by the clothes that they wear, and K.? well, K. wears brown boat shoes. I didn't even know boat shoes existed anymore. Complemented with alternating jeans and khakis, nondescript shirts, and a braid as thick as your arm that could be tucked in her belt (if she wears one), we have someone who does not devote a lot of her time to fashion.
Which is perfectly all right (although if I may about the hair, I've found in past experience that people who grow their hair markedly long seem to tend to do so with time and attention made abundant due to sheltered-ness, e.g., Mennonites).
She also listens exclusively to classical music, which is also perfectly all right; I had a good friend in high school who listened only to classical and 20th-century music - granted, he was also an elitist nerd who played AD&D (before I did), but he did turn me on to Beavis & Butt-head (it was funny at the time).
Actually, she also listens to Praise 106.5 FM, the Christian worship station from Washington state - I know this because she listens to it every morning on the way to school. I've nothing against worshipping
God; after all, it's part of the Christian faith, and if God exists then hey, He probably deserves some worshipping - but if I were a deity, and my followers decided to worship me with dynamic-less soft rock songs repeating the same words and phrases both within and between themselves ("I'd like to request 'Praise the Lord'" / "All right, by whom?")? Well, I'd be in flood-mode.
I appear to have sidetracked myself. Ah yes.
I'm not trying to bad-mouth her, since she is my ride and what goes around has a way of coming around, but there you have it. I am merely attempting to paint a picture of her character, admittedly from my viewpoint, so that you, dear readers, might understand.
So K. is quite nice, but on the whole rather boring. Myself, I am quiet. Especially at eight o'clock in the morning - plus car rides make me sleepy. So I'm not usually to up to shooting the breeze. K., on the other hand, seems to be one of those kinds of people who have to fill silences. Unfortunately though, she usually has nothing of note to fill it with - this does not deter her.
The upshot, however, is that I am becoming quite adapt at knowing when to say "Yeah" and "Sure," and nod my head at the appropriate times without actually knowing what is being said - if you might meet me you may wonder if I am ever actually listening to you. So anyway, I'm usually not listening with rapt attention.
Sometimes I'll ask her questions, like inconspicuously and tactfully finding out why she doesn't celebrate Halloween. And then, the morning after Halloween, on the way to school, she remarked to me how she had been charged by her mom to be on the look-out for some pumpkins, preferably, she joked, ones that weren't smashed.
And Why? your humble narrator ventured, was she on the look-out for pumpkins? Various reasons, all seeming to me to be absurd or at the least socially questionable, came to me.
"My mom wants them," was the response, "for baking."
All right. I don't know if you're as perplexed as I was (bearing in mind that I was locked in a speeding car with her), but I found this answer to be, well, odd. I would, however, remain tactful and polite. She was still, after all, my no-bloody-way-am-I-getting-up-at-6:00am-to-ride-to-school ride to school.
She continued about her mom's baking and pumpkins. Okay, so her family doesn't celebrate Halloween so natch they won't have leftover Jack-o-lanterns.
"Why not," I asked, "just go buy one?"
"They're expensive!" she said.
Twelve cents a kilogram (or pound, I don't remember)? Sure, pumpkins are heavy, so that price can escalate pretty quickly, but not to the point where one would consider it a financial detriment to purchase even one, right? Gluten-free bread in the Bay's health store, that's expensive, at seven dollars for a loaf the size of a videocassette. But pumpkins?
Well, I wasn't going to press the issue. I would just accept the fact that she decided to make some small talk, and the topic just happened to be the fact that she might be pulling over to the side of road at some point to pluck some retired jack-o-lantern off someone's yard and toss it in the car. I suppose, then, that it was for the better that she forewarned me.
Truth be told, though, that it was taking a pumpkin off of someone's yard that she joked about, that it would appear odd and silly: she had no reservations about taking them out of someone's garbage. Apparently, this has happened in the past. Again, I would leave it be, and not jeopardize my transportation or, possibly, personal security. That, I thought, is the end of that.
The next morning, two days after Halloween (this morning, in fact, at the time of this writing), some small talk resumes:
"How are you?" she asked.
"Pretty good."
"That's good. So my dad found two pumpkins yesterday."
Oh no.
I decided to say nothing. K. was more than willing than to talk of her own volition.
"Yeah, two big ones. He found them at the bottom of the garbage bin - there are thirty-nine townhouses in our complex and all their garbage goes into that bin so they were pretty hard to get at!"
(Now I know what you're thinking: I must be making this up. But I assure you, dear readers, that as this happened to your humble narrator just this very morn the experience is still quite fresh in his mind, etched in like a newly-carved jack-o-lantern: these words herein are near verbatim.)
It occurred to me then to ask her "Why didn't you just ask a neighbour for their pumpkins? If they were just going to throw them out anyway you could have, uh, saved your dad some trouble." The question still burns within me, but I asked it not: how could I? I felt as if in a dream - or watching a show on TLC: just too bizarre to turn off.
She continued: "He stepped in one, then hooked his foot in it, and finally flipped it out," she laughed. "But for the other one he had to bolt a piece of metal to a stick to pull it out. When he brought them in my mom asked him how long it took him to get them out [re: purchase question, neighbour question]! They were big pumpkins, she said they'd last for four years! We still have one from two years ago, frozen, we didn't get one last year."
Do the neighbours know? What do they think? Do they avoid? Condone? Assist? Imagine a full-grown man with elaborate homemade contraptions removing your discarded pumpkin from the bottom of the strata's Dumpster.
When she related the story to A., our other carpooling compatriot, A. asked her what they did with the pumpkins: the answer was "Freeze them." I don't know whether the question was asked in some attempt to deal with the story, or simple curiosity. Perhaps this is common practice
K. continued that her mom would probably make some pumpkin bread: she would make something with the pumpkins anyway, as they were having company that night. To be clear, that wasn't an inference on my part: her mom would be making something with the pumpkins for the company that night. But how could I warn them?
Admittedly, though, not the entire pumpkins would be used, just the inside: the outside, the part that was actually in contact with the surrounding garbage in the garbage bin, would be discarded. Again.
But doesn't it strike you as odd? K. spoke about it with such ease and matter-of-fact-ness that I honestly began questioning my own social beliefs. Is it then I who is misguided? Does polite society remove pumpkins from others' lawns and garbages for their own culinary needs? Or are questions of social acceptability and food safety null in this case, or all cases, and if so, why? Am I just some kind of prude?
I went to the Rich Weirdo's presentation of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Vogue Theatre on Halloween night (the biggest Halloween show in North America this year) and had a blast - but this... this is like some kind of real-life In the Mouth of Madness, only not utterly boring.
Assuming I'm right, and she's weird, how would this practice have come into being, and with whom is it shared? I think my biggest concern is for their company: do they know where their pumpkin pie came from? Does it concern them? Do they not know, and K.'s mother, knowing that garbage-pumpkin, not being a common dish, would not be knowingly well-received, leave them to their ignorance? Or would she, not sharing my social ideals, relate to them the cute story of their pumpkins' salvage, with what would otherwise be hilarious consequences?
What kind of bizzaro world have I stepped into??