have you ever felt like crying over a cucumber?

[darkoshi]

A cucumber I had in the fridge got bad. I had to throw it into the compost pile yesterday. It was an organic cucumber. A nice green firm beauty, to begin with. And it was even a gift, of sorts. Someone else had bought it for me, for us.
Later at night, brushing my teeth, I thought about it again and got tears in my eyes and a sniffy nose, and felt like sobbing. Imagining the nice happy cucumber growing in a field with the nice sunshine shining on it... and then when it was all nice and big and ripe, it being picked and travelling in some truck, and ending up in the store, and being bought, with such high hopes of cucumberness... and then I left it in the fridge uneaten for too long, and it got bad!!! (It still seems sad today, writing this, but not sad enough for tears)

I neglected it. The poor cucumber!

So anyway, while brushing my teeth last night, I felt a mixture of intense sorrow/guilt/cucumber-empathy, along with a logical awareness of how bizarre it was to be feeling that way. I was obviously over-emotional. I had gotten pissed off earlier too, from just hearing someone on TV speaking at the Republican convention.

Today I was thinking about it again, about how I could feel so sad over a cucumber. Cucumbers don't have emotions. It doesn't care whether it ends up in someone's stomach, or in the compost pile. So why did I feel so sad thinking about it? Maybe in my mind, the cucumber had a guardian spirit watching over it, and this spirit was so proud of the nice cucumber.... so maybe I'm sad for the sadness of this spirit, in having the cuke come to this kind of end? But surely the spirit would have more than a single cucumber to watch over, and surely the spirit understands that some vegetables go bad; it's just the way things go. Or maybe not, maybe... anyway. That was a rather odd thought-process too.

Comments

[alcippe.livejournal.com]

I feel guilt and sadness over rotted vegetables, too. I think to myself, oh that was such a waste. It never reached it's potential and now it's met this horrible end. But I don't think I've ever actually cried as a result.

I have, however cried over a hard boiled egg. O used to boil me up three hard boiled eggs every sunday and I would eat them over the course of the week in salads and such. The day before I broke up with him (but had made up my mind to do so) I saw the last egg in the refrigerator that he had boiled for me and completely lost it as I tried to slice it up and add it to my dinner. I was totally hysterical.

But in that case the food was tied to a person, so there were other emotions at play.

[darkoshi]

> It never reached it's potential and now it's met this horrible end

Ah, you *do* understand!

And I can see how the egg was an emotional thing for you, in a totally different way.