I have a mango pit in a cup of water, waiting for it to sprout and look madly about for the sun. In the meantime, it looks rather…gross, despite changing the water daily. It’s a small price to pay, I tell myself for the possibility of a mango tree. I can’t have these little experiments at home, Steve has thrown so many away that I can’t even count. How many avocado pits began to sprout and then simply disappeared while he shook his head and muttered at me leaving things to rot. So I have this one at work. I have the cup marked so the cleaning lady won’t toss it. It’s one of those iconic red solo cups that some people enjoy rather ironically, though I’ve never really understood why… One of my co-workers, whom I adore, has a real issue with anything that looks remotely off. She is a total germaphobe, who will not touch a bathroom doorknob without a paper towel in her hand, and flushes the toilet with her foot.
She laughs at herself, and her awareness of her own foibles is endearing rather than annoying.
I was changing the water and cleaning the cup before refilling the cup and returning the pit to its home. She happened to walk into the kitchen at that point and made a bit of a production out of it. “It’s rotting!” she shrieked. I smiled. “Of course it is. That’s what happens to many seeds before they start growing. The outsides rot.” I say it knowingly as if talking to a child. I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but I think I read it somewhere. She carries on for a bit, and after leaving her the kitchen, I snap a picture of my mango pit and email it to myself.
Soon, I have an email heading to her (and another co-worker, to make it look more real). The subject is “FW: OMG, cutest puppy/cat picture EVER!!!!!” The exclamation marks are crucial to making a forwarded photo believable, as is the “OMG”. I can’t bring myself to have a misspelling, although then it would be triple gold.
She is completely grossed (score!) and laughs for several minutes.
It occurs to me to make a sign for my little project. I tape my sign to a wooden coffee stirrer and attach it to the cup. It reads “I am trying to grow a mango tree. I call her “Puppy.”
I think Puppy needs a blog. And daily updates.
When Puppy has lovely mangoes dangling off her lovely branches, we’ll see who's laughing then…. You would think that things such as this would take a lot of time out of my workday, but truthfully, they take almost no time at all. I’ve gotten so skilled at these kind of things I can do them almost without a second thought. I’m not sure if that is something to brag about, or if I should hang my head in shame. Probably the latter.
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