I’m not very good with my hands. I have trouble getting them to do what I want, what my brain sees. I can cite tantrums in home videos in which I used to freak out when I was told I had to color a picture. I’m not good at art that involves me to draw, cut, or glue.
This, as you can imagine, applies to pumpkin carving. Even though I have grown up, and I’ve left the tantrums behind, I still haven’t been able to tackle the art thing.
And I’m just embarrassed to show you the massacred pumpkin that I created for Halloween…so I won’t. It doesn’t due to dwell on failure (or burn my readers’ eyes out with my mistakes). But there is something we can all learn from my ineptitude. There’s something we can all learn from pumpkins in general, actually.
What? Did you think Halloween didn’t know what it was doing when it chose pumpkins as its main mascot? Educate yourself…
You and I are Pumpkins because…
1. Everyone looks the same on the inside: guts and seeds and all.
2. We come in all different shapes and sizes, but we all serve a purpose.
3. We can have some pretty tough skin.
4. Yet, we are also very fragile.
5. We age similarly. (The resiliency of our skin starts to fade, and we start to droop.)
6. Picking a perfect pumpkin in a patch can be as difficult as finding a significant other.
7. As pumpkins grow on a vine, people grow best when they are together.
8. If we don’t have a good foundation, we have trouble standing alone.
9. We can sometimes bring a smile to someone’s face just by existing.
10. We look so much better when there is a light burning from within.
So, there you are. Pumpkins are like us in more ways than we realize. Maybe you’ll think about them longer before you throw them into the street. (Or not). In the end, just try to laugh at your mistakes. You may even find that your jack-o-lantern is laughing with you. (Or in my case, at me.)
Bailey Dailey 