pumpkin humble pie

Let's suppose you are out on a lovely fall day, enjoying the delights of the season at your local pumpkin patch.  Look, over there where everyone is "oohing" and "aahing", why it's a pumpkin sling shot.  How cool is that?  Look at those folks take those wee pumpkins, fit them in the sling and then pull way back and launch them into the air.  See how far they fly?  You can even win a prize if your pumpkin lands in a barrel in the middle of that field over there.  Do not think that this activity is as easy as it looks.  Remind yourself that you sit at a desk all day, and that typing on the computer does not make for good upper body strength.  Ignore for as long as you can the tugging on your sleeve of the six year old who provided the excuse to be at the pumpkin patch in the first place.  Try to distract him by pointing to the corn maze, or dragging him over to pet the bunnies.  Because, my friend, once you get over there, and have shelled out your five bucks and you are standing there stretching that oversized bungee cord for all you're worth, and you let loose of that lovely orange squash, there is nothing quite so humiliating as watching as it plops down not near the target barrel, not in the field where all the other pumpkins are landing, no, your heroic effort didn't even clear the fence.  You could have thrown it farther.  If you were smart, you'd quit while you were ahead or at least go and bat your eyelashes at one of the manly men loitering about and ask them for their help.  But no, you do none of those things.  You proceed to make a complete fool of yourself--and make no grand impression on your offspring either--by launching not one, but two more pumpkins in a similar wimp-like fashion.  Walk away, trying not to hang your head in defeat.  Be supremely glad when the kidlet gets distracted by the wagon ride.  Consider getting lost in the corn maze and never coming out. 

Comments

[beemerman]

Sounds like fun! Where was this exactly??

[MissMeliss]

I don't think I've ever experienced a pumpkin slingshot before (it sounds like it should be a drink, not a festival game, really). But you've made me nostalgic for childhood visits to pumpkin patches.

[GraceD]

If you had the perverse sensibilities of your friend GraceD, you would imagine a fairly big-ass slingshot, one that could accommodate a big-ass pumpkin. You would be able to shoot a 40 pounder up and over the little train ride and the hay wagon, and watch it splatter in the parking lot.

But you are not perverse like your friend GraceD. Still, you will find her hiding in the corn maze, as well.

[Joy Des Jardins]

Hey, noone ever said you had to be "Wonder Woman of the Slingshot." I've never heard of this or seen it around where I live...crazy.

[Chris Clarke]

You would be able to shoot a 40 pounder up and over the little train ride and the hay wagon, and watch it splatter in the parking lot.

I'm pretty sure she likes the kidlet though.

[Jim F.]

Someone asked where this was and I assume it's the pumpkin patch at the corner of Highway 101 and Kitchen-Dick Rd., which I have always found to a most interesting name.

[nina]

Yes, that's the place. And we could never resist making silly jokes out of that name. Then there's the intersection of Kitchen-Dick and Shuttlecock.

[Jim F.]

I will have to look that one up the next time I'm in Sequim

[peg]

Close -- make that Kitchen-Dick and Woodcock -- better yet.

[Jim F.]

I've been at that intersection many times and I had forgotten. I always associate Woodcock with my fourth grade teacher, who was mean as a snake and so it's never funny to me, but I digress.