Today I saw a really great pumpkin. Lately it seems like there is much more of a market for “different” pumpkins, or maybe I just notice the different ones more now that I am older.
It was a green pumpkin, and short and kind of squat, the way people on Pinterest like their pumpkins, sort of squashed like a pancake, so they can stack them one on top of the others and put them on either side of their porches. This one had that pleasing shape, maybe a little too round, and a super thick stem. It was yellow on the bottom where it hadn’t gotten quite ripe. But the most fascinating thing about this pumpkin was its skin. It was green, and it bubbled, like it was boiling on the inside and bubbles were rising to the surface. It had skin like you’d imagine a witch has, or like a dragon. It was so pleasing to touch, that texture, bumpy rather than smooth. If you were to carve this pumpkin it wouldn’t be smiling and winking at you. You wouldn’t take a stencil and make a really intricate carving of an anime character, or something like that. This jack-o-lantern would be fierce. It would be engaging. You wouldn’t want to look at this jack-o-lantern but you’d be drawn to it without really knowing why.
I am drawn to the different pumpkins these days, and this pumpkin was the best one yet. And I know, again, from Pinterest, that I am not the only one taken by odd pumpkins. They’re not aesthetically pleasing but there’s something about their difference that makes them awesome.
It made me think about me and about my looks. I have never been a perfect pumpkin. I am oddly shaped where I should be pleasing, and I have more bumps than are cool. My color is off. You probably wouldn’t put me in your fall display. But if I can be totally enamored by a wildly different pumpkin, shouldn’t I also be enamored by myself with all my differences? If I can like a different pumpkin, there are certainly others in this world who like them as well. Because they’re different, and ok maybe kind of ugly…subjectively. Others might find them fascinating. Maybe others find me fascinating too.
Maybe weird green pumpkins are trendy right now and soon enough the world will move on to something else and leave the weird green pumpkins in the patch. My body shape was trendy once. It’s possible to come back into fashion. And it’s possible that some people held on to what’s fashionable because they never fell out of love with it, or they saw something different than the world sees.
If that pumpkin can be proudly displayed on the picnic table…all by itself…in all its lumpy glory…maybe I can be just as proud of my differences.
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