The Strangest Thing
The strangest thing I ever came home to was not the large tomato in the living room, but it was up there. The tomato seemed to have been playing cards. I knew my mother had an affinity for tomatoes, but this was new to me. Especially since the tomato had been cut in half. You could not see it from the entrance of the room, but sure enough half of the tomato was missing. That is what cued me in that this was no normal tomato, as the inside seemed to be a collage of people. My mother, my father, my brother and sister, my great aunt, my great uncle, my grandmother and grandfather. All twisted together to form the semi-liquid reddish inside of the tomato. Needless to say my first action was to enjoy a quick tomato themed snack, and then proceed to ask how they had gotten inside the tomato like that, and why there was a large half of a tomato inside the house. They did not answer me. It seemed that they could not answer me, that forming the inside of half of a tomato prevented them from answering the question. It is incredibly rude to ignore a question, even if you are creating the semi-liquid interior of a large half of a tomato so I smacked the tomato hard with the palm of my hand. Needless to say, my family and I have never been closer now that we all create the inside of a slightly red, semi-liquid interior of a large half of a tomato.
It Happened a Long Time Ago
The tomato sat on my desk staring at me. I refused to eat it, even though my wife packed it for me. I have an extreme dislike for tomatoes, as my brother had once gotten mugged by one, in a dark vegetable crisper right near our home, but I got there too late and I haven’t seen him since. Ever since that incident I have distrusted tomatoes. I knew that there were diabolical plans forming inside the tomatoes’ semi-liquid interiors. One could get easily trapped inside a semi-liquid, as it was just liquid enough for one to be able to move, but just solid enough for one to not be able to go anywhere. I knew for a fact that there was something trapped inside the tomato, as I could see it wriggling. It has been wriggling since I took it out of the brown paper bag. Taking pity on this creature I took my nearest tomato slaying knife and cut out whatever had gotten stuck inside the tomato. Any enemy of a tomato is a friend of mine. Inside the tomato I found a small man, struggling to get out of the semi-liquid, as it was very easy to get trapped in a semi-liquid. It turned out to be my brother that had been trapped inside the tomato this whole time. We had bought him right at the fruit stand and hadn’t even realized it. However the incident happened years ago and I had no desire to relive the trauma, so I promptly threw out the tomato, along with my little brother inside it.
Tales of a Small Town
It rains tomatoes where I am from. They come from the sky and the clouds and even run down the mountains in streams. We collect them in large barrels every time it rains and my mother will make tomato pie and tomato dinner and tomato clothes and tomato quilts. We even have a lovely little store in town that sells tomato office supplies and tomato candy. The tomato factory moved in not long after it started raining tomatoes. They took in tomatoes and out came pumpkins. The more tomatoes they took in the more pumpkins came out. The factory even placed a large funnel in the sky so that every time it rained all the tomatoes would fall directly into the tomato factory. While the funnel was an eyesore the greater problem was the lack of tomatoes and the excess of pumpkins. It got to the point where the small store started selling pumpkin office supplies and pumpkin candy and my mom started making pumpkin dishes and pumpkin desserts and pumpkin clothes and pumpkin quilts. There were so many pumpkins that there was no market for it, so overnight the tomato factory packed up and left, but they took all the tomatoes with them, so as the pumpkins ran out we could get no more from the factory, and it would not rain tomatoes as the tomato factory took all the tomatoes from our town. With no tomatoes or pumpkins we turned to making human dishes and human desserts and human clothes and human quilts, but soon even the humans ran out and with the humans gone we had no other choice but to pack up and move to a new little town that rained cabbages.
I Wanted a Car
For their sixteenth birthday my friends got nice gifts that they had really wanted, but not me; in the morning when I woke up I promptly received a brand new pet tomato. It was a smart tomato, I could easily see the large brain inside it, full of knowledge and tomatoly wisdom. I could see the brain right through the hole in its front, and while I was not happy with owning a tomato with a hole in it, or any tomato at all, at least it was an intelligent tomato. The tomato was the size of a doberman, which was small for its breed, and that meant it would require less food and less washing and shorter walks. I was assured many times that the tomato would be able to clean itself, that its singular large hand could take care of that. That was another defect; I knew for a fact that this specific breed of tomato was supposed to have two large hands, not a singular large hand. That also meant that it could not walk around on its two hands, and instead would have to drag itself across the carpet with one, as tomato prosthetics are far too expensive for a sixteen-year-old to afford. It was not a problem as it hardly moved; it just sat on my dresser and stared at me with its brain hole. My tomato, which had been named Toby by my parents, lived a long life; at least it did until it was spaghetti night.
Ripe Old Age
My family raised the tomato boy. He was well known in the upper eastern region of the south western region of Dakota’s small farming community and my mother was very proud of that. We had found him in the greenhouse when he was just a baby, attached by a branch sticking out of his head to a rather large plant growing green beefsteak tomatoes. He continued to grow on that plant until he appeared to be a toddler, and then the plant deemed him ripe and he fell off. He then grew like a normal boy in our household, eating meals of fertilizer, and for snacks my mother would give him little packets of plant food, which he thoroughly enjoyed. I considered the tomato boy my brother and we did everything together. We built my model trains and we made sure he was well fertilized and we would both play in the tomato plants among his real family. He was incredibly sad when our green beefsteak tomato plant died, as it was his biological mother, and we held a lovely funeral. From then on he was an orphan, and my mother formally adopted him into our family, making us real siblings. We grew up together, and he was there when I had my first child, and I was there when he had his first tomato plants, one green beefsteak tomato plant to honor his mother and one red beefsteak tomato plant, as the red beefsteak is the king of tomatoes. We grew old together, and he was no longer the tomato boy, but the tomato man, and then the tomato old man. His funeral was just as beautiful as his mother’s and I don’t know if I ever really got over it.