Thursday, October 27, 2011

Pumpky le PEW

I don’t mind fruit and veggies as long as they know their place in the home. They are supposed to reside in unused decorative kitchen baskets, so duped visitors THINK I eat healthily. Or if our produce has been particularly bad, I hide it in ‘the cooler’ so it doesn’t become even worse before I throw it all away. But recently for the Autumn festivities, I chose a large attractive pumpkin as the centerpiece for our seedy shanty. Even the grocery sack kid noticed that this pumpky was unusually light for its size but who cares, I’m lazy so less heft for me to carry home - right?

So I proudly presented the rotund orange orb to my wife as some kind of Harvest offering, and she immediately proceeded to make a heaping shrine to all things ‘Ween’ smack dab in the middle of the kitchen table. Now this presents a problem for me because ‘El Gourdo’ has broken the first rule of produce by partnering with me at dinner, despite the fact that he is not fried, buttered, boiled, or knifed. But to further my angst, our table is also not all that big, so now where am I supposed to wolf down my trough of chow – off my ‘gut shelf’?

I could probably patiently live with the first two problems until October 31st but little did I know my bulbous cucurbita consort, even in his pre-Bris natural state, SMELLS like it has dirty orange 'farmer feet'. Now I have been buying and defiling pumpkins at Halloween for a long time and I’ve never had one reek worse than me before. If I ever carve the obligatory triangle facial features into this rotto-‘stink-squash’, the only things that will show up on All Hallows Eve will be the flies and even they will have to wear teeny-tiny gas masks.

Every morning before I brush my teeth, my wife already endures a daily eye-watering Sasquatch encounter, so now she gets a double-dutch dose of ‘sasSQUASH’-stench too. Since I am such an environmentalist, I had no choice but to act and prevent this unholy gas giant from adding to the polluted air that we breathe. I pulled out the serrated long box and entombed that big orange melon ball from top to tail in shiny aroma-free clear plastic. I did leave a tiny ‘pew-gap’ in the wrap though, so just a whiff of acrid air remains suspended in our house. Not only does it keep the neighbors away but I didn’t want my method to work TOO WELL, just in case the wife might get some ‘funny’ ideas – and a LOT more Saran wrap!